In Male-Dominated Pizza Circles, Women Are Grabbing A Bigger Slice Of The Pie
When Laura Meyer won the World Pizza Championship for pan pizza in Parma, Italy, the Italian judges called her the male word for champion. Despite her first-place victory, she was the only winner who didn't get a trophy that day. Hers was mailed a year later.
"They basically refused to acknowledge that a woman had won," she said, recently recalling the snub. She was the first woman to win — and the first American. That was 2013.
The next year, competing as the only woman, she won best non-traditional pizza at the International Pizza Expo in Las Vegas with a triple-infused rosemary dough (rosemary water, rosemary-infused olive oil, and chopped rosemary). And last month, Meyer's simple pepperoni pizza won the first-ever division of the Caputo Cup, of modern pizza, and placed third for traditional pizza at a September contest in Atlantic City, N.J.
