Breakfast Pizza Has Some Cloudy, Yet Delicious, Origins
No, we're not talking about eating cold pizza the morning after ordering delivery — although we absolutely support that, as long as you keep leftover pizza safely. If you've never had pizza with classic breakfast foods like eggs and sausage as toppings, you're missing out.
The actual origins of breakfast pizza — and even pizza in general — are unclear. While flatbreads first appeared in ancient texts, true pizza wouldn't pop up until the 1800s in Italy. During this time, people did eat an early form of pizza for breakfast, but these slices featured lard, garlic, and cheese (not exactly the staples of modern-day breakfast pizza).
Although we can't be sure, the progenitors of the modern breakfast pizza might not have looked much like pizza at all. For example, quiche — a French egg pie with medieval Germanic origins — became popular in the late 20th Century. Who's to say it didn't inspire breakfast pizza in the '90s? In the eastern European nation of Georgia, the traditional dish Khachapuri consists of a bread crust with eggs and cheese cooked inside. It's not strictly breakfast, though; it's a street food eaten all day. While Khachapuri typically contains intact eggs, the best breakfast pizzas are made by scrambling the eggs first so they're pre-cooked.
Was this the first breakfast pizza?
When pizza reached America in the late 1800s and early 1900s, local cooks began experimenting with new ingredients. In fact, modern breakfast pizza may have been invented as recently as the 1990s. One Pennsylvania bakery owner named Marietta John claims to have first added scrambled eggs to pizza at a university cafeteria.
Today, though, breakfast pizzas are sold in slice shops from California to Rhode Island — and even at 7-Eleven stores. So whatever the origins of breakfast pizza is, there's no denying its popularity has taken off in recent times. Even now, breakfast pizza innovation continues with TikTokers offering their own takes on breakfast pizza. For instance, one TikToker completely flipped the script on breakfast pizza thanks to his viral "pizza eggs." The scrambled eggs feature chopped-up leftover pizza, mixed in as small cubes. While the jury is out on if the trend might change the way you make breakfast, it's obvious that breakfast pizza takes many shapes and forms and isn't going anywhere.