The fried pizza looks like something filthy from the US. It was actually “invented” to save Naples after the Second World War

I love to cook, even though someone wants to banish the kitchensand I love to see cooking videos. However, the algorithm sometimes gets confused and shows me videos of people putting raw pasta with tomato sauce into a container and baking everything, or a lot of fried things. They are videos of Americans cooking, of course, but when I see someone frying a pizza, it doesn’t offend me for one simple reason: it’s almost as old as the Neapolitan pizza and played a fundamental historical role in post-war Italy. Feeding a city in which the ovens had been destroyed. Because Neapolitan pizza may be a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but fried pizza is the lifeblood of the city of Naples. The statutes of pizza. Italians are very particular about food. I have shared many trips with great Italian colleagues and they are very wonderful when they defend what is theirs. It’s great, but they are the first to burn the coffee (although we Spaniards are not here to give lessons on this, of course). Now, don’t let a Neapolitan get the pizza. He ‘I will discipline‘is the bible, the table of commandments which includes everything you need to know to make a Napoletana pizza. What types of ingredients, quantities and heart that should be put inside and on top of the dough. On a recent trip, talking about pizza and after eating in a fairly competent Parisian pizzeria, the topic of fried pizza came up. What would clearly be an affront to the pride of that Neapolitan boy caused a smile to appear on his face. And, as we say in Xataka, it makes sense. Zeppole. Long before Disciplinare and baked pizza, in Naples there was already an important tradition of fried dough. In it freedom from coquina from the 13th century describe fermented doughs, fried in oil and served with honey, but if there is a predecessor of fried pizza, it is the zeppole. They are like fritters that date back to sometime between the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century and have some variants, but a well-known one is filled with pastry cream and decorated with cherries in syrup. Although this is a dessert, there are also salty varieties to which other ingredients such as anchovies are added. Although they were eaten in several Italian cities such as Rome or Calabria, in Naples they caught on well and, when the more formal pizza began to appear, they became popular. started to differentiate between the pizzaiuolo (the one who makes baked pizzas) and the zeppolaiolo (the one who makes the fried foods, including fried doughs). Emergency. During the 19th century, texts began to appear that included recipes for stuffed and fried calzoncini as a more satiating product than the sweet variant and an explicit distinction began to be made between “pizza al forno” and “pizza fritta di cicoli.” Fried pizza was already establishing itself in the Neapolitan language before the 20th century as a street food to take advantage of leftover meat and fish, but then came the Second World War. The conflict devastated Naples and the postwar period was no better. The situation of extreme poverty and the destruction of the kilns by Allied bombings combined with a lack of wood. The city had to be rebuilt or the furnaces fueled, and the priority was clear. Furthermore, even if they wanted to make some pizzas, everything was missing and the ingredients were expensive due to the shortage. So, many Neapolitan families began to look at the zeppole and were occurred that they could make large disks of pizza dough, fill them with cheap ingredients like ricotta, vegetables and leftover meat if there were any, fry them and… that’s it. Fried dough with the ingredients on top “A ogge a otto“. Workers could take this as a filling lunch for breaks, it was economical and became a symbol. In the absence of “real” pizza, the new “pizza del popolo” was the one that helped in the reconstruction of the city and became a symbol. coined the “a ogge a otto”, which came to mean “eat today, pay eight days later”, reinforcing that role as a symbol of poor post-war Naples. American Coffee. Therefore, fried pizza was not invented in the postwar period, since there was a previous context of fried doughs, but it was the time of the popular explosion due to necessity. This Neapolitan boy was particularly proud when telling me the story because, although less known, Neapolitan fries are also a traditional dish, but the one that lifted the city after the war was… pizza. And it’s funny how my first impulse was to think that fried pizza was just another thing about Americans determined to fry things, when really it’s even something cultural for certain people. These types of stories are always fascinating to me, like the one about American coffee that we can think was invented in the United States when, in reality, it was an invention of the Italian baristas of the Second World War who they added water to the coffee because the American soldiers did not like the concentrated flavor. In Xataka | The pizza that is successful in China does not have pepperoni or pineapple: it has a fruit that smells like rotten eggs and sewage

There are a lot of people who want to turn potato omelette into the “new pizza”

The potato omelette is almost certainly the most ‘homemade’ dish in the Spanish recipe book. In fact, more than a ‘dish’ it is a ‘symbol’ of traditional cuisine, of all life. And yes, it’s true: it has always been available in bars, cafes and restaurants; but the queen of tortillas was (proudly) something that was made at home. But not anymore. When one stands in front of the Navarra factory of Natural Prepared (the manufacturer of the 60 million tortillas that Mercadona sells each year) it is inevitable to think that this train has already passed. As they say in DAP, the industrial process is fascinating (each tortilla is fried at a different temperature!) and, at the same time, it is a clear piece of how the industry is betting everything to ensure that Juan Roig’s vision comes true: let’s stop cooking. And the tortilla is the battlefield. We will return to the Mercadona tortilla, but it is not the only actor at play. Martinuca was born just after the pandemic and, with the impetus of Maria Pombohas achieved a turnover of more than seven million euros for its premium tortillas at home in 2025 alone – more than double that of the previous year. And that’s only with four locations in Madrid and Barcelona. Its objective is quite clear: “elevate the Spanish tortilla to a global icon, as the Italians did with pizza“. And the reference is interesting because, de facto, the tortilla is following a ‘pattern’ similar to the one that pizza followed 20 or 30 years ago: the sector is growing in the hypermassive industrial product and in the premium (with a huge step in delivery). And why now and not 20 years ago? First of all, for a technical issue. As our colleague Miguel Ayuso explainswe are talking about the first fresh tortillas that hit the shelves. “Until then there were only tortillas that were pasteurized in their own packaging and the juiciness was greatly compromised,” Sergio Beni told DAP. Since Palacios/Fuentetaja began to grow the market a decade ago, until Elaborados Naturales has managed to become the first player at a national level, the technical, logistical and distribution revolution has been enormous. But “being able to do it” has only been part of the process. The other is that we have stopped cooking. We are doing it, in fact. According to the report “Convenience, the super power that changes everything” that has just been published, the average daily time spent cooking has fallen to 24.5 minutes, 41% of consumers usually eat in a hurry and ready-to-eat dishes grew by 55% between 2022 and 2025. Mercadona takes a third of that pie. What’s interesting is that, for the first time, respondents say they go to these products for price. It is not clear that this is true because the prices are high compared to food prepared at home; but even if it were a simple rationalization, it is interesting. It is not in vain that the majority of Spaniards continue to say that they like to cook. But weren’t we wanting to stop cooking? In DAP, Beni explained that “people no longer want to cook at home. They want to cook as a hobby, but you want that time you use to cook for your things, to play paddle tennis, to go to the gym, to read a book, to study or to make your life. You don’t want to spend that time cooking. Before our mothers spent two hours cooking and we don’t want that anymore, we want to spend that time on other things and products that are good and that are good.” However, even though There is a lot of data that proves them right.this is still a business story. “Cooking” is becoming “plating things.” It is true that the 20th century has been a century in which more and more stages of food processing have been taken outside of domestic kitchens. Today, our country only 28% of Spaniards cook from fresh foods. In fact, if we go to the dataWe can see that millennials eat 30% more often in restaurants than any other generation; When they cook, they spend less time (one hour less per week than Generation It’s US data, but we can find a similar process in all Western countries. That is to say, the discourse that kitchens are going to disappear is the framework for the next step of integration between the agri-food industry and domestic kitchens. A regulative ideal, a scenario that helps normalize what we already do (but without feeling bad about it). Will they be successful? Nobody knows, but it is clear that they are going to try hard. The Spanish tortilla is the best example. Image | instagram / Miguel Ayuso In DAP | We visited the Navarra factory where Mercadona’s potato tortillas are made: they make one and a half per Spaniard per year

It was the pizza and it has already fallen

In the US, pizza is religion. And it is logical. Not only for its flavor. Several generations have grown up watching how the Ninja Turtle or Scooby-Doo got their boots on with a dish that in Washington DC they have even elevated to the category of geopolitical indicator. The big question is whether that love of dough, tomato sauce and mozzarella is fading as Mexican food conquest the heart the stomachs of Americans. Of course there are indicators that suggest this. What has happened? That the United States seems to be losing interest in pizzas. Your chains they grow slower that the entire sector of the fast foodsales are suffering and there are studies that suggest that in the country it’s easier find cafes or Mexican restaurants rather than pizzerias, something unimaginable not long ago in a country hooked on the most famous dish of Naples. So much so that there are big chains of pizzerias passing by economic difficultiesclosing stores or directly declaring bankrupt. What does the data say? They confirm that gastronomic ‘prick’, which some of the major US newspapers are already talking about. In December he did The New York Times and I recently confirmed it The Wall Street Journal with a chronicle in which he slips a revealing fact: in 2024 pizzerias were the sixth most popular type of restaurant in the US, far from the second position in the 90s. Not only that. The number of pizzerias spread across the US has been decreasing since the peak it reached in 2019. Meanwhile, cafes with pastry service and Mexican restaurants have grown at a good pace. Are there more indicators? Yes. There are signs to suggest that specialty pizza chains have seen sales growth was stagnating in recent years, moving away from the pace at which the fast food. Some of the most famous firms in the sector recognize even that they have chained quarters of sales declines or that customers have gone from ordering family pizzas to smaller formats with fewer ingredients. “The pizza sector is in full transformation. That’s what consumers tell us,” admits to TWSJ Ravi Thanawala, Papa John’s International. That does not mean that pizza is no longer a business in the US (in 2024 the chains generated 31 billion in sales through their restaurants), but it does seem to be losing ground. Both economically and culturally, giving up space on the streets in favor of places with other gastronomic offerings. Click on the image to go to the tweet. And what is the reason? Better to talk about reasons, in the plural. Those who have started looking for explanations point to a decisive factor that usually determines demand: price. Today a large pizza in the US costs 17 dollarsmore than other alternatives fast food. “The prices have become crazy. When I was little we would order two extra-large pizzas, a soda and a side for $25.99,” he lamented recently in TNWT Celest, a young woman from Los Angeles. Have they risen that much? As explains a pizza makerthe reality is somewhat more complex: pizzas have become more expensive in part because ingredients like pepperoni have also become more expensive. The problem is that competition in the sector (both between pizzerias and with other chains) often leaves pizza makers no choice but to enter the game of promotions and discounts. In August Domino’s launched a limited offer of $9.99 per pizza, which increased its quarterly sales by 5.2%. His experience confirms another key to the pizza crisis in the US: unlike what happened a few years ago, consumers today have a wide range of possibilities. They have to open Uber Eats or any other similar app to have a meal at home. It doesn’t matter if it’s Chinese, Mexican, Korean, Spanish food… or pizza. Are there more factors? Yes. US pizzerias have not only seen increased competition in their market niche. They also fight with another rival: frozen pizzas that can be bought directly in supermarkets, a business on the rise and that has been improving its offer over the years. This without taking into account another factor that helps to understand the growing weight of Mexican gastronomy in the US: there are more restaurants because simply the population native to that country has been shot during the last decades, especially since the 70s. Added to the above are changes in consumption and a part of the clientele that is increasingly concerned about their well-being. So much so that the manager of a firm with 270 pizzerias in the US recently recognized to TNYT that studies the idea of ​​creating a pizza “compatible with GLP-1“, with lower calorie content. Whatever it takes to ensure that pizza does not lose its culinary throne in the US. Images | Daniel (Unsplash) and Hybrid Storytellers (Unsplash) In Xataka | If the question is how to make a team more productive, the answer according to Jeff Bezos is clear: with two pizzas

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