National Pepperoni Pizza Day

On September 20th, Pepperoni Pizza Day recognizes the most popular pizza ever created. The day celebrates the pizza enjoyed by young and old alike.According to legend, Raffaele Esposito created the first pizza in June of 1889.

Pepperoni pizza is one of the most beloved foods in the U.S. Each year, over 3 billion pizzas are bought by Americans. Pepperoni pizza only comes second to cheese pizza, which is popular enough for it to get its own holiday; This is a holiday known as National Pepperoni Pizza Day and is one that occurs every single year on September 20th. So anyone wanting to celebrate this day might want to head to their local pizza parlor and grab a slice of this tasty food on this day.

The History Of Pepperoni Pizza

Although the history of National Pepperoni Pizza Day is lost to time, we can go over the history of pizza—or more specifically, the history of pepperoni pizza. So let’s start with when pizza was first invented and then work our way towards when pepperoni started to be added to these pizzas to take them to the next level.

The first pizza—or more accurately, proto-pizza, was a flatbread known to the Romans as panis focacius. This was a type of flat-bread focaccia that was baked on a hearth. This flatbread was then customized with a variety of different toppings. Unfortunately, none of those toppings included pepperoni but were more likely a combination of olive oil, cheese, and various other products. At this time there weren’t any tomato-based sauces because tomato is a New World crop.

During the 16th century, the first tomatoes were brought to Europe from the Americas—although many Europeans at the time thought of this fruit as poisonous and therefore refused to use it. It wouldn’t be until the 18th century, that vendors around Naples began to use tomatoes and tomato sauces on their yeast-based flatbreads. This is widely considered to be the origin of pizza.

It’s believed that pepperoni wasn’t added to pizzas, however, until the early 20th century. This is when Italian immigrants to the U.S began making pepperoni and adding it to their pizzas. So it’s probably accurate to say that no one culture invented pepperoni pizza. Instead, it’s probably accurate to say that a variety of different cultures influenced this food.

You wanna pizza me?

From the original and basic Neopolitan pizza of tomato and cheese, a wide variety of toppings are available today.

Of the choices, pepperoni remains a firm favourite, proven by the fact that the top-selling pizza at Domino’s last is its Pepperoni Passion. Out of a total of 105 million pizzas sold in 2019, just under 10 million were Pepperoni Passion, and the amount of pepperoni used by the company was enough to go around the world more than once.

Each slice of a medium pizza with either sausage or pepperoni has about 10 to 30 more calories and one to four more grams of fat than a slice of cheese pizza.