Hawaiian Pizza Sliders. Scott Suchman/photo; Lisa Cherkasky/food styling, for The Washington Post The people of Hawaii were never consulted before the creation of what is known worldwide as “Hawaiian pizza” – a tomato and cheese flatbread topped with ham and chunks of pineapple. A Greek man invented the sweet-and-salty combination in Canada – and he did not even intentionally name it after the state.
He also did not foresee just how divisive his creation would become. Plenty of people consider it an abomination, and many even (justifiably? harshly?) judge people who like it. My brother, Josh, is not one of these people.
He loves Hawaiian pizza. “It’s a perfect combination of sweet and salty. Like the cheese-and-jam crackers Mom used to make us as a kid,” he told me recently.
This recipe, for sliders inspired by the fruity, porky pie, is for him. I’ve been to Hawaii only once, but I did not see pineapple on pizza while there. What I did see was Hawaiian bread.
The plush, sweet rolls popularized by King’s Hawaiian were on offer at bakeries, restaurants, hotels and local markets. Hawaiian bread as we know it was invented by Robert Taira, a Hawaiian-born son of Okinawan immigrants. In the 1940s, he studied baking and pastry in the United States, and he graduated at the top of his class.
His dream was to move to Tokyo and open a Western-style bakery of his own. But in 1950, after Japan closed its borders because of the Korean War, Taira was barred from obtaining .
