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Make your own Higgs Boson pizza

To celebrate the fourth birthday of the Higgs boson announcement CERN invites you to make your own particle-based pizza

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Make your own Higgs Boson pizza

Use these diagrams and our recipe below to join in and make your own pizza to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the announcement that CERN had discovered the Higgs Boson (Image: CERN)

If you have ever wondered what a recently discovered particle looks like in food form you don’t have to wait any longer. CERN marked the anniversary of the day they announced the discovery of the Higgs boson with 400 specially prepared pizzas —with toppings representing different parts of a particle and detector.

Accelerators
The pizzas were prepared using step-by-step instructions pinned to the wall to make sure no particle went missing in the making process (Image: Noemi Caraban/ CERN)
400 pizzas were served on Higgs pizza day in Restaurant 1 at CERN to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the announcement of the discovery of the Higgs Boson (Image: Maximilien Brice/ CERN)

The two pizzas, a meaty and a vegetarian version representing a two-photon or a four-muon collision respectively, were prepared yesterday morning by the CERN chefs.

The idea was born in Naples, the hometown of Pierluigi Paolucci, who - while chatting with INFN president Fernando Ferroni - realised the striking resemblance between Higgs boson event displays and the delicious pizzas in front of them. They inspired the chef of the historic “Ettore” pizzeria in St. Lucia to create the Higgs boson pizza in time for the opening for a Art&Science exhibition on 15 September 2015 in Naples.

And then enjoyed by an excited crowd eager to taste their own spicy Higgs boson, represented on the meaty pizza by chorizo, or juicy Higgs boson represented by a cherry tomato on the vegetarian version.

If you’d like to make your own pizza, just follow the recipe below and use the diagrams to lay out the toppings with the utmost scientific accuracy.

 

Recipe for a Higgs Pizza

 

Ingredients:

Pizza base

(you can make your own with the suggested recipe below, or buy one ready-made)

  • 2 ½ cups bread flour
  • A packet of active dry yeast
  • 1 tspn white sugar
  • 2 tbsn olive oil
  • 1 tspn salt
  • 1 cup warm water

For the vegetarian pizza toppings

  • Cheese
  • Two asparagus sprouts
  • Some artichokes (at least 8 slices)
  • Slices of red and green peppers
  • A single cherry tomato

For the meat pizza toppings

  • Cheese
  • Two asparagus sprouts
  • Slices of ham
  • Black olives
  • A few slices of salami
  • A single slice of chorizo

Method:

Heat oven to 240C/fan 220C /gas 8.

Make the base and lay out the toppings using the diagram as a guide.

Put each pizza on a baking sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes until crisp.

Enjoy!