5 facts about pizza that lovers of this dish are unlikely to know about

1. Pizza is cooked on a volcano in Guatemala

Pacaya is one of the most active volcanoes on the planet, located in Guatemala. Despite regular eruptions, it is a favorite place for extreme climbers. This sport helps to burn calories, and therefore, after climbing the next mountain, you probably really want to have a bite to eat.

So, the volcano is a great place for the restaurant business!

At least that's how it is thought Guatemalan chef Mario David Garcia Mansilla.

Every day he climbs the mountain, wearing protective equipment and heavy combat boots so that the soles do not melted. On himself, he carries a backpack with 30 kilograms of ingredients and bakes pizza on the volcano, which he also sells to passing tourists. He calls his makeshift open-air restaurant Pizza Pacaya.

Mario has two ways to make pizza. The first is to simply put a baking sheet on a frozen, but still hot section of the rock. And the second is to find a sufficiently large bubble in the lava, where the temperature reaches 1,000°. Such bubbles cook

calls “oven”, and the pizza in them is especially tasty.

2. The area of ​​the largest pizza in the world was almost 1,300 m²

Long time record in the Guinness book belonged Made in Rome in December 2012, a pizza area of ​​1,261.65 m². It was made by chef Dovilio Nardi from NIPfood restaurant. The pizza was named "Ottavia" in honor of emperor Octavian August and it was 100% gluten free.

But more recently, this record has been broken. US blogger Airrack in collaboration with Pizza Hut cooked pizza with an area of ​​1,299.71 m², placed in the huge hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center. It took 6,193 kilograms of dough, 2,244 kilograms of sweet sauce, 3,992 kilograms of cheese and 630,496 pieces of pepperoni salami.

After the presentation, the pizza was cut into pieces and sent to charities in Los Angeles.

3. Pizza was originally the food of the poor.

In general, they began to lay out different fillings on the test for a long time. There are many examples of such dishes: Chinese bing, South Asian naan, Alsatian flammkuchen, French quiche and African injera. They are united by a common idea: you can take food with your hands, and replace the plate with dough.

Very important if you can not afford cutlery.

The modern pizza appeared in Naples, in the 16th-17th centuries, when they began to use for cooking brought by neighbors Spaniards from America tomatoes. At first they were treated with distrust, but then they tried it. The first versions of pizza were sweet, not spicy. And this dish was considered street food for the poor.

4. They sell pizza in a pizza box in Brooklyn

Once Sean Bertiem was walking through his native Williamsburg in Brooklyn and noticed that all the garbage cans on his way were filled with pizza boxes. Disorder. Where is Greta Thunberg looking?

Bertiem did not like this, and he opened pizzeria Vinnie's Pizzeria, which sells its products... in edible boxes. Yes, you got it right.

Almost like in that meme: we put your pizza in pizza so you can eat pizza while eating pizza.

The top of the package is covered with a special foil. Unfortunately, you can’t eat it, but it takes up much less space in the trash can than cardboard containers.

Bertiem sees the pizza shell as an intermediate step, and plans to ditch the box altogether when he figures out a replacement. In general, this guy likes original ideas. For example, in 2015 he invented a pizza stuffed with smaller slices of pizza.

5. Weird things are sometimes put on pizza.

Pineapple on pizza hasn't surprised anyone for a long time, but sometimes even stranger ingredients are put into this dish. For example, in the popular in Sweden Pizza Africana add bananas, onions, curry, peanuts and chicken. The latter can be replaced with more exotic meats typical of Africa, such as ostrich or buffalo.

However, there are more original dishes in the world. For example, pizza recipe Pizza Royale 007, which was created in Glasgow and sold for $4,200.

Her stuffing included black caviar soaked in Dom Perignon champagne, lobster marinated in 100-year-old cognac, pieces of venison, Scottish smoked salmon, premium prosciutto and vintage balsamic vinegar.

In addition, pizza is sprinkled with gold leaf, apparently so that the buyer does not have a question: “Why did I pay so much money for?”

Still not fancy enough for you? Well, here's a pizza called Louis XIII for 12,000 dollars. It is named after the cognac in which Norwegian lobsters and caviar are marinated. The top of the pizza is topped with seven kinds of cheese and 24 carat gold leaf. The dough is made from organic Arabian flour and sprinkled pink salt Murray rivers. The dish is prepared within 72 hours.

And finally, one more recipe, this time simple, but original. One restaurant in Ohio adds blanched and oven-roasted cicadas to their pizzas.

True, it's worth bearing in mind: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration does not recommend eat them if you are allergic to seafood. The fact is that cicadas have a chemical composition similar to shrimps - arthropods.

By the way, the same management thinks the presence of up to 15 fly eggs in tomato paste or pizza sauce is "acceptable". And yes, these guys have standards for how much mold, insect fragments, aphids, hair, and rodent excrement can get into factory-made products without requiring a batch recall.

Bon appetit!