Millions of internet pedants will leap at you for calling various American styles of pizza "pizza", since only the "traditional" Neapolitan/Roman style is "real" pizza (or a different internet pedant might declaim that only NY pizza is pizza). That standard honestly applied would preclude anything much farther back than 100 years.

Now, I tend to think those internet pedants are boring and obnoxious, but the entire reason we have to have a discussion about the "myth of the national dish" is because of people like them.

Once you decide that these things don't matter and food should just be enjoyed without caring about "authenticity" and that every tradition is only traditional in a certain context and time period, the whole idea of fighting about it kind of gets silly.

older, at least 2000 years now

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/world/europe/pizza-mural-...

Dishes similar to pizza (bread with stuff on top) existed across all of the Mediterranean since forever.

Back in the day people had no proper phyisical dishes (read: recipients) and they just ate food on top of bread slices.

Trenchers... but it was old bread and you didn't necessarily eat it. Or sometimes you gave it to the poor after your meal if you were being gregarious.

There wasn't something like "old bread" at old times except if it had mold on it. You just placed it near fire and made a toast of it, or you softened it either with wine or homemade liquors. If you were a loaded guy (not rich but the one who had a TV in the village in the 60's), you for sure culd acces milk at a daily pace.

> Pizza predates the use of the tomato.

What makes it pizza specifically at that point?

Rhetorical opportunism.

Yeah, I find the idea that a flattened leavened (maybe?) bread with something on top is "pizza" to be quite a stretch.

Some of my favorite pizzas have no tomato sauce:

* White clam pizza

* Amici's Milano or Trentino

* State of Mind's Peas on Peas on Peas (when it's in season)

Why would the lack of tomato sauce make it not a pizza?

(You didn't specifically mention tomato sauce, but GP did and it sounds like you are in agreement? Please forgive me if I misunderstood.)

I'm saying Bread + topping is not inherently a pizza. There are lots of other dishes that are bread + topping that we don't call pizza.

Is crostini a pizza? Is bruschetta? Is sabich? Is lahmacun? Arepas? Is an open face bagel with cream cheese?

I think you hit the nail on the head. Yes, bread + topping is by definition not pizza. Pizza is made with raw pizza dough and toppings, not with already-baked bread.

Of course if the pizza dough is wrapped around the toppings/fillings and pinched around the edge in a half moon shape, now it is a calzone, not a pizza.

Or is it an empanada? ;-)

And thank you for that list! I have never had sabich or lahmacun, so you have given me some new things to try.

Pizza is cooked on one side; it is cooked after adding toppings; it is cooked rapidly in an oven. Most flatbreads are flipped; some are cooked with open heat.

Because they called it pizza and modern pizza is a direct descendant of it.

Whats more interesting is how fish sauce or Garum fell out of favor.