A pizza history in Hackney

A Sbagliata pizza from Sourdough Saloon at the Lord Morpeth Pub

When our weary Roman legionary was stomping up Stamford Hill, he would have done well to console himself with some flatbread from Akdeniz in Stoke Newington High Street, a lamacun from Mangal or a slice of sourdough pizza from Franco Manca.

In his heavy pack were wheat grains, flour, a chunk of nice fatty bacon and a little frying pan. So on the long journey north, he may have stopped to make flatbread from the flour, with a few rashers, an egg procured locally and some foraged Full English in a wrap,

En route to Vindolanda, the Roman fort at Hadrian’s Wall, our foot soldier had days of arduous marching ahead of him, and was not to know his improvised snacks would eventually become one of the world’s favourite food.

Flatbread or a circle or yeasted dough, eaten with whatever topping comes to hand, has been around for thousands of years.

The type now flourishing at the likes of Il Bacio in Stoke Newington, Well Street Pizza and at a plethora of other places in Hackney, is the Neapolitan pizza, a street food invented in nineteenth-century Naples in response to the needs of this unique town, then the pleasure capital of Europe, but with social problems.

It was here that topography, climate and demographics combined to create a special food suited to the needs of a particular urban environment.

Inside Naples

The most beautiful city in Europe, and one of the largest, Naples is enclosed by its bay and hemmed in by hills and mountains.

By the mid-eighteenth century its growing population had nowhere to go, crammed into narrow alleys and crowded tenements, so the lazzaroni (the ragged unruly populace) surged day and night around streets and squares, snatching pleasure and employment as it came, snacking on what little food they could afford.

For those who lacked the means to cook at home, pizza was a cheap way to ward off starvation.

It was tasty, nutritious and plentiful, made with inexpensive local ingredients (cheese, tomatoes, basil, etc.).

The producers were skilled, hardworking and almost as poor as their customers; the lowest of the low feeding the poorest of the poor.

Right at the bottom of the heap, these pizzaioli were all the same: gifted craftsmen and women making a precarious living out of fast food of incomparable quality and deliciousness.

It had to be good to sell, and it had to be cheap.

The pizza Napoletana, once a local speciality, eventually became one of the nicest little earners in the whole wide world of international industrialised food, changing its character as it spread across the globe.

Pizza Hut sells millions of standardised pizzas a day, in more than 11,000 locations.

From being a tasty, inexpensive snack peculiar to one city, pizza evolved to suit the tastes and whims of cities everywhere, from Bangkok to Birmingham, New York to Novgorod…

Some think that servicemen after the Second World War went back home to the USA with a taste for pizza, and returning to Italy as tourists expected to find it all over the place.

The pragmatic Italians took the hint, and soon every tourist city had its pizzeria.Italian immigrants from the south made pizzas wherever they settled, adapting them to local tastes – especially in the USA.

Toppings can be anything from spaghetti bolognese to wasabi and Boston baked beans, as well as the conventional Italian classics, which can be lush and lavish or laid on with a frugal hand, to let the bread speak for itself.

The dough can be thick, thin, crispy, soft and soggy or chewy. Your pizza can be pre-cooked and frozen, easy to reheat in a domestic microwave, or best made in a special wood-fired oven and eaten on the spot.

Hackney citizens can enjoy all of these versions, from middle eastern-style pizza at Palestinian restaurant Tatreez on Stoke Newington High Street to the authentic Italian style pizza at Lardo on Richmond Road.

Revolting

But while Hackney may fast be becoming the British capital of the specialist sourdough pizza, elsewhere the proliferation of excessive toppings on a mediocre base has created a backlash.

Naples has risen in revolt, and organisations for the definition and protection of the genuine article have produced a legally binding document, a Denominazione di Origine Controllataor DOC, which spells out at awesome length the precise characteristics of the Pizza Margherita, page after page, which you can find online, and disregard at your peril.

Everything is specified in relentless detail, from the quality of flour used for the sourdough, its precise production, the kinds of cheese (mozarella di bufala) and tomato (San Marzano), the olive oil used, the dimensions of the pizza, the size and precise temperature of the oven, the sight and smell of the crust.

This type of pizza we used to be told was named after Queen Margherita, who visited the pizzeria Brandi in Naples in 1889 and fell in love with it.

In fact myth-busting historians point out it was being made decades earlier with the basic ingredients, and that even the royal thank you letter framed on the wall is a fake.

But here in Hackney you can get a taste of the real thing, and understand what all the fuss is about.