How it is made : Domino's Pizza

something that connects everyone is love for the cheesy savory lovely delights that we know as pizzas and while the best pizzas are the ones made fresh in the oven due to their extremely high demand pizzas have become one of the most mass-produced regular foods in history but how can something that is usually made by an experienced chef be made using machines thousands of times a day well let's find out gathering the ingredients most frozen pizzas like homemade or restaurant ones are made up of three main components the dough which is made from flour but also includes yeast oil salt as well as some preservatives the sauce which is a proprietary blend of tomatoes and spices as well as a few chemicals to ensure smoothness and stable shelf life and the cheese which is brought pre-made into the factory those and of course the toppings that range from simple vegetables to mushrooms and meats but regardless of what exact combination of ingredients is used by the factory once they've been gathered we can start the actual cooking process that begins as it does with all pizzas with kneading the dough while many people don't like to have it any pizza enthusiast can tell you that a crust can make or break a pizza this is why this step could be considered the most important now since these pizzas are going to be made hundreds at a time the factory starts by mixing huge amounts of refined flour salt oil some sugar for the yeast as well as some cornmeal for flavoring one by one into a pan that is being mixed using an industrial attachment and once everything is mixed for a bit they also add the magical ingredient some active yeast that'll give the pizza crust some lovely fluffy but chewy texture and as

anyone who has ever needed dough can tell you it's an intensive job so to compensate for that the machine mixing and kneading the dough is powered by the equivalent of a truck transmission but as a result of that power the dough only takes about four to six minutes to be needed and once that is done the entire needed mass is allowed to rest for a few minutes so a it can relax from all that intensive kneading and b so all that yeast can do its job and make the dough fluffy and airy and for that purpose the dough is left untouched and allowed to rise for around half an hour an important thing to note here is that since the slightest change in temperature and moisture can accelerate or impede the rising process the conditions in that room are kept perfectly uniform so that all pizzas have the perfect consistency but once the volume has around doubled in size the dough can move on to the next step the creation of the crust in this step a machine turns the risen and ready dough from earlier into a machine called a chunking machine this takes parts of that dough of five to six pounds in weight and throws them onto a conveyor belt that runs underneath the massive pan as a result the dough converts from one heavy mass into smaller more manageable pieces another important thing to note here is that the conveyor belt like all others that carry the dough has already been dusted with raw flour so that the very tacky dough doesn't stick to them as a result the conveyor transfers the chunks effortlessly to the next station which is a sheeting machine consisting of stainless steel rollers that have also been dusted with flour and which press the chunks into one long uniform sheet that exact thickness of a pizza crust from there a set of cutters trim off the uneven edges from this crust sheet while a set of brushes dust the top and sides of the dough with even more flour for the next step cutting the pizzas in this step as you can guess the sheet of dough is finally cut into

recognizable pizza circles a large plastic roller with circular molds here passes over the dough cutting it into perfectly even circles immediately after that a set of small wheels removes the remaining dough from the cutting and transfers it into another conveyor where it will once again combine with new dough to be used again and all we're left with are perfectly round pizza crusts from here another set of stainless steel rollers poked some holes into the crust so that it cooks evenly without any air bubbles and then we can move on to the next step par baking now if you're making pizza at home to eat then this wouldn't be a necessary step at all but since these pizzas are meant to be frozen now and cooked later having them cooked halfway so that they hold their shape in the freezer is necessary this is why the pizza rounds

are transferred from their usual plastic conveyors onto steel conveyor belts which transport them to a continuous oven that bakes them at 390 to 600 degrees fahrenheit between six chambers for three to four minutes this ensures that the pizza crust cooks evenly through the center without burning or developing a crust and also gives it a lot more structure than it would have had without baking and another thing this par baking accomplishes is important in the next step which is saucing now the pizza sauce used in most pizzas is made in a separate factory using recipes unique to each company but right now we're only concerned with the relatively cool down sauce that is kept in large reservoirs over the conveyor belt carrying the pizzas here as soon as the warm pizzas get out of the oven they are topped with a bunch of tiny dollops of sauce from a saucing machine this allows the sauce to properly adhere to the pizza crust instead of pooling on as a separate material and since we're at the saucing stage that also means it's time for cheese and other toppings here large blocks of a proprietary cheese blend which mostly includes motorel with a few other varieties are brought into the factory where they are put into an industrial shredder this shredder then deposits the shredded cheese onto a conveyor belt of sorts and this belt passes over the pizza belt when it ends it drops all that cheese onto the pizzas now since this is not controlled the cheese spreads evenly on the entire conveyor belt not just the pizzas but that's not an issue because as soon as the pizzas get cheesed they are transferred onto another conveyor belt while the first one drops all the excess cheese down into a collector to be used again the same is done with all other toppings like vegetables ham pepperoni etc where a conveyor belt deposits them onto the pizza and then the pizza gets transferred and the remaining toppings are reused and once the exact amount and kind of toppings have been distributed onto the pizza it's basically oven ready which means that only a couple of steps remain the first of which is testing now the process of inspection is applied at almost all steps throughout the process in particular at the cutting of the pizza crusts to check for inconsistencies folded edges or other flaws as well as after baking to check for any burnt or overcooked pieces but this stage is the most crucial one as after this it will be impossible to catch a mistake as a result both people and machines check for stuff like mishap and pizzas overcooked crusts and non-uniform toppings while they also measure the weight and size of the pizza to keep the product perfectly consistent and once that's done we can finally reach the final step freezing and packing as you can imagine during this step the pizza is transferred into a separate chamber known as a spiral freezer in which it travels on you guessed it a spiral conveyor belt for over 20 minutes and at just 25 degrees fahrenheit this freezes the pizza without turning it into an icicle instantly and locks all those lovely flavors inside and once it's served that specified amount of time it is brought onto the packing station where a set of machines align the pizzas individually cut them into slices and wrap them in shrink wrap to further seal them from the environment then another machine vacuum seals the shrink wrap and from there they're boxed and shipped off to hungry family homes across the world