The first written "pizza" was a rent payment to a bishop in 997 CE — but it had no tomato sauce, because tomatoes wouldn't reach Italy for 500 more years.
A dish of Italian origin consisting of a flat round base of dough topped with tomato sauce, cheese, and various other ingredients, baked at high temperature.
From Italian pizza, first attested in a Latin document from Gaeta in 997 CE. The ultimate origin is debated: possibly from Byzantine Greek pitta ('pie, cake'), from Greek pēktos ('solid, clotted'), or from Langobardic (Lombardic) *bizzo ('bite, morsel'), related to German Bissen. Key roots: pizza (Italian: "flatbread, pie (ultimate origin uncertain)"), pitta (?) (Byzantine Greek: "pie, cake").
The earliest known written reference to pizza comes from a Latin document dated 997 CE in the southern Italian town of Gaeta, which mentions "duodecim pizze" (twelve pizzas) as an annual rent payment from a tenant to a bishop. But this was not the pizza we know — tomatoes wouldn't arrive from the Americas for another 500 years. The modern pizza with tomato sauce was invented in Naples, and legend credits baker Raffaele Esposito with creating the Margherita pizza in 1889 for Queen Margherita of Italy, using tomato, mozzarella, and