Pizza Fun & Trivia

Guinness World Records™ Pizza Achievements

 The Largest Pizza

The largest pizza ever made was 37.4 meters in diameter made using 500 kg of flour, 800 kg of cheese and 900 kg of tomato puree.  This was accomplished on December 8, 1990 at the Norwood Pick 'n Pay hypermarket in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The record for the longest line of pizzas was a line of pizzas that stretched for 221 m. This was accomplished on 7 June 2008 in the old Italian neighbourhood of Leichhardt in Sydney, Australia. Twenty-five chefs used 500 kg of flour, 250 litres of tomato sauce and 350 kg of mozzarella cheese. The pizzas were then donated to the food rescue organization OzHarvest, to feed Sydney’s homeless and disadvantaged.

Most Expensive Pizza

The record for the Most Expensive Pizza goes to chef Domenico Crolla’s “Pizza Royale 007″. This pizza included amongst its ingredients, an assortment of some of the world’s most expensive food ingredients, such as lobster marinated in cognac, caviar soaked in champagne, sun-blushed tomato sauce, Scottish smoked salmon, venison medallions, prosciutto, and vintage balsamic vinegar. In addition to all these fine ingredients, it’s was topped with a significant amount of edible 24-carat gold flakes. The pizza was sold on an eBay auction for £2,150 (approx $3,900 AUD) with proceeds going to The Fred Hollows Foundation in the UK.

Longest Pizza Delivery

The record for the longest pizza delivery in history goes to Lucy Clough of Domino’s in the UK. She took a Dominos vegetarian supreme pizza the distance of 16,950 km from Feltham, London to 30 Ramsay Street, Melbourne, Australia, on November 19, 2004. It took 2 days to arrive… which I guess means it would be Free!

Pizza History

• Basic pizza most likely began in prehistoric times with the 'dough' or bread cooked outdoors on hot flat stones. Roughly 1,000 years ago herb-and-spice-covered circles of baked dough grew exceptionally popular in Naples, Italy. Known as focaccia, these rounds were served as an appetizer or a snack. (Source: Smithsonian)

• Pizza developed in Italy in pre-refrigerator times. After focaccia, its most direct ancestor was "Casa de nanza," which means "take out before." Housewives would pound out dough into a thin crust and place leftovers to bake. Pizza was a peasant food designed to be eaten without utensils and, like the French crepe and the Mexican taco, was a way to make use of fresh produce available locally and to get rid of leftovers.

• Pizza as we know it could not have evolved until the late 1600s when Old World Europeans overcame their fear of a New World discovery - tomatoes. Native to Peru and Ecuador, a plant which produced yellow or red fruit (later called tomatoes) was introduced to Europe in the early 1500s. Brought back by Conquistadors to Spain, the tomato was thought to be poisonous and was viewed with suspicion. It wasn't until the late 1600s that Europeans began to eat the tomato. (Source: Smithsonian and Pizza Today)

• The peasants of Naples, Italy, who lived mostly off of bread and little else, were the first to add tomatoes to their focaccia bread rounds.

• In 1830 pizza truly began with the opening of the world's first pizzeria. Named Port'Alba, the pizzas were cooked in an oven lined with lava from Mount Vesuvius, a volcano located on the Bay of Naples. (Source: Smithsonian)

• Modern pizza was born in 1889 when Queen Margherita Teresa Giovanni, the consort of Umberto I, King of Italy, visited Naples. Don Raffaele Esposito, who owned a tavern-like place called Pietro Il Pizzaiolo, was asked to prepare a special dish in honour of the Queen's visit. Esposito developed a pizza featuring tomatoes, mozzarella cheese (a never before used ingredient made from the milk of water buffalo) and basil - ingredients bearing the colors red, white and green for the Italian flag. He named it the Margherita Pizza, after the guest of honour. Thus, the modern-day tomato-and-cheese pizza was born. (Source: Smithsonian and Pizza Today)

• Shops in the volcano-devastated city of Pompeii bear the characteristics of a pizzeria. Marie Antionette's sister, Marie Carolina, wife of Ferdinand I of Sicily and Naples, had ovens built in the forest so she could enjoy pizza while the Royal Hunting Party feasted on wild ducklings and pigs killed in the hunt.

• The popularity of pizza exploded throughout the country when World War II servicemen returning from Italy began opening pizzerias and raving about that "great Italian dish."

• In Italy, on 9 December 2009 the European Union, upon Italian request, has granted to safeguard the traditional Italian (Neapolitan) pizza (in particular the "Margherita" and "Marinara"), specifying permissible ingredients and methods of processing. Only pizzas which followed these guidelines could be called "traditional Italian pizzas", at least in Italy.