Hawaiianology

The arguments that start from the beginning to the end, there is no shortage of who thinks they are right, so it's important to know what makes flat bread what it is. If it's about talking about what happens to the dough it's about taking it into the building that transforms it into the delight of what people are talking about. Becoming a full fledged pizza, because someone had to build it before any of the rest could happen, so in Hawaii that was the first fire ovens. These were called the portuguese-oven with the portuguese immigrants the "Forno" (1870), the first ovens that arrived in Hawaii.  Madeira brought Bolo do caco, but because it was poor people's food, the sweet potato was used, breadfruit in Hawaii, banana, and taro as a way to stay away from more expensive ingredients. It's much more well recognized that more famous bread dishes were Fried Malasadas and Pão doce Sweet Bread. They were working with what was available like octopus, grouper, chi...

Companies started to bring in Pizza as a must have on their menus for the growing demand from kids to adults wanting it. In 1955, the Woolworth's at Hotel and Fort streets ran an advertisement. Italian pizza pie sold for Seventy-nine cents for cheap-convenience, not a restaurant price, so it was affordable. This is when popularization happened with the mainland chains coming up and the local pizzerias stepping up their game to fight against them. Sacramento-based chain Shakey's (1964) by Sherwood Johnson and Ed Plummer was one such operation that opened in Hawaiʻi (Waimalu, Kaneohe, Waipahu, Keeaumoku, Pearlridge).  Around this time people Disco was Dead (1979) disenfranchised people from trying Hawaii's pizza and for a more fast-food recognizable option. It added to the fuel of people not liking Pineapple Pizza with ham, spam, and toppings that forgot about the crust. A particular topping that took away people's attention for a bit was Ontario-style "Hawaiian pizz...

In July 1943, roughly a hundred and fifty thousand American and British troops landed in Sicily. For two years they fought north through Southern Italy where oregano grows wild, pizza was an ordinary food on neighborhood streets. For most of them it was a first encounter with both, but they would take those tastes back home. Hawaiʻi was the staging ground for the entire Pacific war during those times with millions of Americans passing through Oʻahu between 1941-1945. The peoples taste in pizza was unlike other places, because Hawaiʻi had spent seventy years building something that exists nowhere else. Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Filipino, Korean and Puerto Rican workers had lived side by side in plantation camps for decades, trading food out of lunch pails across languages, and what came out of that exchange was genuinely new. The competition, even back then for convenient food was fierce. 

Landing in Hawaii that is known for its pristine views of nature, sometimes people want a slice to take with them, for a smell to add to the view. The pizza in Hawaii starts as always by watching the dough, keeping an eye on the fire, and making sure that the sauce to ingredient ratio works together. As the movement of steel meets the brick and a crust that has a nice glaze slides out of the heat a colonial pineapple pizza comes out for a few tourists who hadn't even thought of a strategy of ordering their dish. Grass huts and pineapple fields with a touch of sweet and smoky. The flavor they thought they wanted, until they tasted things that are less familiar. The pizzas that are made often depend on the oven and there are several, but when wood is involved, another layer is added to the mix, but with the mass amount of orders coming in it is hard to justify a wood burning oven, so many of these wood burning ones are in the backyard of local homes. It might make a person think if a...