Pasta is the pride of Italian cuisine and it offers us a history worth looking at. While the arrival of Italians in the New World lead to the huge popularity pasta has today, its origins go far beyond modern times. It is believed that Ancient Greeks and Romans had discovered a flattened dough form, which they called in Greek laganon. However, laganon was not boiled like modern pasta – it was roasted in ovens or on heated stones. Mentions about another variation, called lagana, are made by Apicius, a Roman writer of the first century AD.