Happy National Cheese Pizza Day
In search of who invented a made up holiday.
September 5th is National Cheese Pizza Day, an entirely made up holiday that even National Day Calendar can’t attribute to a specific person. Better known in New York City as a regular or a plain slice, cheese pizza is topped with two things: tomato sauce and cheese. How did this simple dish come to have its own holiday? Let’s take a look.
Origins of Cheese Pizza
Cheese pizza has its origins in 19th century Naples, first known as pizza alla mozzarella. Neapolitans had many different toppings at the time, and pizza’s versatility is what made it popular with poor and working class people.
A version of this pizza alla mozzarella pie was christened the Margherita by an enterprising pizzamaker. When King Umberto I and his royal consort, Margherita of Savoy, visited Naples, the queen supposedly wanted to sample the working class food. The court invited pizzaiolo Raffaele Esposito and his wife Giovanna Brandi to cook pizzas at the palace, and Esposito is often credited with renaming the pizza alla mozzarella in the Queen’s honor.
Cheese pizza as we know it today really got its start in New York City with the earliest pizzerias catering to Italian immigrants. Cooked in coal-fired bread ovens, the pies grew larger with a thinner crust than those in Naples, birthing the New York style pie.
American pizza makers also started using lower moisture mozzarella cheese made from cow’s milk. The buffalo milk mozzarella common in Italy was impossible to acquire, since it didn’t travel well without refrigeration. There are stories that organized crime helped encourage pizzerias to use low moisture cheese, but more likely it was simply cheaper and less likely to spoil.
Low moisture mozzarella in America is similar to scamorza in Italy. Aged slightly and with less water by volume, the cheese can last longer than fresh fior di latte (cow’s milk mozzarella). It also melts easily creating the oozy mouthfeel.
A Look at Other Pizza Celebrations
Today’s holiday specifically calls out cheese pizza, but there’s no shortage of pizza holidays. October has been celebrated as National Pizza Month since 1984 when Indiana pizza shop owner Gerry Durnell began publishing Pizza Today. The month celebrates all types of pizza, regardless of style or topping.
But there’s also a national day dedicated to Deep Dish Pizza (April 5), Pizza Parties (Third Friday in May), Margherita Pizza (June 11), Pepperoni Pizza (September 20), and Sausage Pizza (October 11). And of course there is National Pizza Day — celebrating all the pizzas — on February 9. But it hasn’t always been.
Back in the 1970s, pizza day was held in January. David Miller initially created a Pizza Day in 1971 as a fundraiser for the March of Dimes. Miller owned Moose’s Saloon in Montana, and donated pizza profits to the charity. During that decade, the pizza day fundraiser expanded, and even looked like Pizza Day might go national. It didn’t.
So in 1997, another National Pizza Day was declared for June 4th. Tony Modica, who created the Pizza Dance, sang happy birthday in Washington D.C. on the steps of the Capitol building. (The Pizza Dance is reminiscent of the Macarena which had been released a few years earlier). New York Congressman Floyd Flake sponsored the declaration in the House. (Flake was maybe better remembered, if at all, for 17-counts of tax evasion, in a case that was later dropped). Why June 4th never caught on as National Pizza Day might be the same reason wedding DJ’s don’t break out the Pizza Dance.
In Search of Cheese Pizza Day
The oldest reference I could find for a Cheese Pizza Day dates back to 1965 when the Ted Ellos Appliance store in Ironwood, Michigan was looking to move some ovens. Promising in-store demonstrations of Monarch brand ovens, the shop advertised Cheese Pizza Day for the Friday afternoon. The free pizza came with coffee. This one-time event likely has nothing to do with the modern iteration of National Cheese Pizza Day.
The modern incarnation of National Cheese Pizza Day appears to be a fairly recent innovation. Media companies, desperate for click-bait content (definitely not the reason I wrote this) have embraced national food day holidays. There are discounts galore for cheese pizzas from chains and local shops alike. Nearly every “news” publication has some version of this article offering an inside look to pizza deals. Looking back at the archives, these start becoming popular around 2017 to 2019, and nearly universal from 2020 onward.
Before that time frame there is a lot less information. There are crumbs of data dating back to the earlier part of the millennia. Scott Weiner of Scott’s Pizza Tours was interviewed about National Cheese Pizza Day back in 2010. The internet is fairly quiet about National Cheese Pizza Day before that, but traditional newspapers have a few hints. An events calendar from 2002, published in the Vindicator, cites a National Cheese Pizza Day, and in 1999, the Jefferson Farmer’s Advocate mentions National Cheese Pizza Day alongside Blueberry Popsicle Day. From here the trail nearly went cold.
I searched a few more newspaper databases but came up empty handed. Then finally, I found a reference to the phrase in a paywalled newspaper archive from 1996. That’s when I came to this article on Cook’s Info, citing the Wisconsin State Journal from September 2, 1996, reminding readers of the upcoming National Cheese Pizza Day on September 5th. This appears to be the oldest digital reference to a September National Cheese Pizza Day.
While this clue doesn’t tell us who invented National Cheese Pizza Day, it does provide some insight — Wisconsin is, after all, a huge cheese producing state. The state is home to BelGioioso cheese, makers of mozzarella cheese and brands like Polly-O. Mozzarella has historically bean known as “pizza cheese” and the growth of pizza consumption has helped make mozzarella even more popular than cheddar cheese.
While this is all speculative, it does seem likely National Cheese Pizza Day might very well be the product of Wisconsin’s cheese lobby, one of state’s the manufacturers, or even the dairy farmer collective. Certainly a celebration of cheese pizza would drive sales of cheese.
In either case, the best way to celebrate is to head over to your local pizzeria and grab a regular slice, aka a plain slice, aka a cheese slice.
One more thing
Here are a few tasty pizza histories you might find interesting.