This is a Domino's pizza.
And this is everything that goes into making it.
Welcome to "Fast Food Chemistry."
I wanted to know just what goes into
the most popular pizza on the planet.
So I was able to get ahold of the 56 ingredients
that go into making one and build it myself.
But don't try this at home.
All right, we're back again
with another "Fast Food Chemistry,"
and, honestly, I haven't watched any of this yet,
but I kind of feel like
this one's gonna be a lot harder than the Big Mac,
specifically because, to my knowledge --
there's a fly in the studio --
to my knowledge,
the studio in New York does not have a pizza oven.
I've never worked at a Domino's,
but I have worked at a few pizza places.
Good luck, Medha.
This bottle is phosphoric acid.
It's used as an acidifier
and a preservative that inhibits mold growth.
It's also commonly found in sugary sodas.
We left an egg in the phosphoric acid for days,
and the result is this.
It looks like the shell has completely dissolved
and what's left over is just the membrane of the egg.
To illustrate what this stuff can do to your teeth,
we put a real wisdom tooth in phosphoric acid.
After just a few days, the tooth completely dissolved.
[record scratching]
Sorry, where are you guys getting teeth?
This is L-cysteine,
which recent studies have shown
could be effective in combating hangovers.
Can confirm, does work. It's great.
The problem is you need to remember
to take the L-cysteine while you're drinking.
Good luck with that.
Then there's TBHQ, found in the garlic oil.
It's pretty dangerous,
and we couldn't get our hands on it.
Domino's pizza sauce contains:
tomato puree, which is water and tomato paste,
sugar, salt, spices,
garlic, soybean oil, and citric acid.
From that group of ingredients,
we don't really see anything surprising.
The only, quote, unquote, "chemical" is citric acid,
which is what gives citrus fruits
their characteristic sour taste.
As a food additive,
it's the thing that makes sour candy like Warheads sour.
So it's probably a little more sour than you would expect.
Do a little citric acid taste test.
This is the citric acid.
I don't even know how much is, like, too much.
Oh!
That's too much!
Ah!
Ah-ha! Yuck!
Yo, a little goes a long way.
Domino's hand-tossed dough contains:
enriched flour, which is wheat flour,
iron, thiamine mononitrate, niacin,
riboflavin, folic acid,
water, soybean oil,
and contains 2% or less of the following:
[sped up] sugar, salt, whey, maltodextrin, dextrose,
dough conditioners, which is sodium stearoyl lactylate,
enzyme, calcium sulfate, ascorbic acid,
calcium phosphate, L-cysteine,
yeast, and cornmeal, used in preparation.
Medha: The base of this dough is the same as most.
It has enriched flour, sugar,
salt, water, and yeast.
After that, the ingredients for the dough
start to get interesting.
Maltodextrin and dextrose are both sweeteners,
kind of like sugar.
The dough conditioners are a few ingredients
that create chemical reactions to do two things:
improve consistency and speed up the cooking process.
They are sodium stearoyl lactylate, aka SSL,
an emulsifier that gives the dough a springier texture.
You can think of, also, an emulsifier as a substance
that helps two otherwise incompatible substances,
like oil and water, bind together.
Amylase is the enzyme that's naturally found
in your saliva to digest food.
Putting it in the dough does a similar thing.
It breaks down the sugars
and converts them to carbon dioxide,
helping the dough rise.
Finally, L-cysteine. This is a dough strengthener.
The FDA categorizes L-cysteine as GRAS:
generally recognized as safe.
But they regulate that it can only make up
0.009% of the recipe,
which is a little bit fishy.
L-cysteine can be typically made
from goose or duck feathers
and/or pig hairs and hooves.
But Domino's says theirs is not animal-derived.
Vegan L-cysteine is derived from E. coli.
Uh, what?
So the choice is L-cysteine from animals
or L-cysteine from E. coli.
These doughs have finally risen.
I can see what the ingredients are doing.
It's softer, and it's holding its shape.
It's a surprise to me that how
good it actually looks,
considering it has all those chemicals,
and I would assume that it was harder to put together,
so, yeah, so far so good.
Domino's calls their cheese "Pizza Cheese," and it contains:
part-skim mozzarella cheese,
which is pasteurized milk, cultures, salt, enzymes,
modified food starch,
cellulose, added to prevent caking,
nonfat milk, whey protein concentrate, natural flavors,
sodium propionate, added as a preservative.
All these enzymes in the cheese
aren't the same as the enzyme in the dough.
Instead, it's rennet,
a substance use to separate milk into solid curds.
Typically, rennet is made
from the stomach lining of a ruminant mammal,
such as calves and buffalo.
But Domino's says that the rennet they use
is not derived from animals,
meaning their cheese is both vegetarian and halal.
A little mozzarella ball, it's perfect.
So, now that we've shredded our mozzarella cheese,
we're gonna toss it in modified food starch and cellulose
to prevent it from caking together.
Cellulose is a dietary plant fiber,
and one of the most common sources is wood pulp.
The cheese that Domino's
and most other fast-food pizza places use
is low-moisture part-skim mozzarella.
The lower fat content means
it doesn't get as oily when it melts,
and the lower moisture content means
it melts more consistently.
I've got low-moisture mozzarella cheese right here
alongside the fresh stuff.
Can I make it any clearer?
They're different.
This is definitely thicker, still really smooth.
And this guy ...
Mm. Creamier, but also grittier.
Does that makes sense?
Domino's ingredients are thorough enough
that they even include their pan spray.
It contains water, propellant, soybean oil,
soy lecithin, potassium sorbate (preservative),
and sorbic acid, also preservative.
Soy lecithin is in everything
from ice cream to baby formula.
The color of soy lecithin is not what you'd expect.
It's like an orange color.
Depending on what study you listen to,
it'll lower your cholesterol,
or it can kill you.
Then we have two preservatives,
potassium sorbate and sorbic acid.
Sorbic acid is a naturally occurring compound,
and today it's the most
commonly used preservative in the world.
It's not an exaggeration to say
the global food supply chain
wouldn't be possible without it.
It's an effective antifungal agent.
There's a propellant added into the pan spray too,
which is a pressurized liquid
that rapidly turns into gas when exposed to air.
When you press the nozzle on a spray can,
this is what causes the contents to spray out.
There's no way of telling which propellant Domino's uses,
since the FDA evidently
doesn't require companies to disclose it.
But propellants approved for food use in the US include
carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, food-safe alcohols,
and even petroleum-derived fuels like propane and butane.
This would be incredibly dangerous
to replicate in the studio,
so I'm actually gonna ignore that one.
I'm not trying to have explosives in the office,
and I'm not trying to blow my hands off.
Instead, I'm gonna mix it all
into a little spray bottle right here.
After hearing all that, she's shaking it up.
It's like, ugh, don't explode.
Domino's adds a garlic oil blend to the crust after baking
to make it extra savory and addicting.
It contains the following:
butter-flavored oil,
which is liquid and hydrogenated soybean oil,
[sped up] palm oil, salt, natural flavors,
which contains canola oil, lipolyzed butter oil,
sunflower and soy lecithin, lactic acid,
colored with turmeric and beta-carotene,
artificial flavor, TBHQ,
and citric acid, protects flavor.
Vitamin A palmitate,
autolyzed yeast extract,
beta-carotene for color,
dehydrated garlic, Parmesan cheese,
which is part-skim milk, cheese cultures, salt, and enzymes,
salt, dehydrated parsley, spice,
annatto extract for color,
natural flavors, citric acid, lactic acid,
and oleoresin rosemary.
The main ingredient is butter-flavored oil,
which is essentially soybean and palm oil
with artificial flavoring and preservatives.
It's tasty.
Oh, God.
I mean, yeah, it tastes kind of like butter,
but it tastes like butter-flavored something.
TBHQ and citric acid are added
to protect flavor and extend shelf life.
However, TBHQ is regulated by the FDA
and can only be used in small doses,
due to evidence that large quantities may be harmful.
One study found that TBHQ increased
the incidence of tumors in rats,
while another study reported cases
of vision disturbances in humans.
TBHQ gets the JDFWI,
Joe doesn't f--- with it.
I tried to buy it,
but at every turn, each supplier asked me
if I was a registered laboratory,
which, as y'all can see, I clearly am not.
So that is one ingredient
we weren't able to get our hands on,
but I'm high-key relieved.
♪ Pouring the stuff together ♪
♪ Putting the stuff together ♪
Then, we add some chefy things
like Parmesan, salt, parsley, spices,
and, of course, garlic.
I am the biggest fan of garlic.
Like, I don't care
if I'm about to, you know, smooch people, or --
[record scratching] sorry, not people. My husband.
Good save.
That's pretty good.
The Domino's buttermilk ranch sauce contains:
soybean oil, cultured buttermilk, distilled vinegar,
water, high-fructose corn syrup,
[sped up] sour cream, which is culture cream,
contains less than 2% of sugar, salt, egg yolk,
whey protein concentrate, garlic juice, garlic powder,
monosodium glutamate, xanthan gum, onion,
polysorbate 60, parsley, potassium sorbate,
and sodium benzoate (preservatives),
cream, natural flavor, phosphoric acid,
spice, lactic acid,
calcium disodium EDTA to protect the flavor,
blue cheese, pasteurized milk, cheese cultures,
cells, enzymes, whey powder, nonfat milk.
Oh, the asterisk: it's dried.
You've almost definitely heard
of high-fructose corn syrup.
In the US it's used as a sweetener
in tons of processed foods,
including some where you might not expect to find it,
like this ranch sauce right here.
It's not the same as the corn syrup
you can buy in the grocery store.
And, in fact,
it's pretty difficult to get your hands on
if you're not a food manufacturer.
However, I did manage to buy some,
and it's right here.
[grunts] Oh, my God. Oh, [beep].
I'm sorry. Not allowed to say that.
Holy moly.
All right, guys.
Can someone help me, please?
OK.
Cameraperson: Two, one.
[Medha grunts]
So, the funny thing about our buddy right here
is that we only need, like, a quarter cup
of high-fructose corn syrup,
but because restaurants and stuff
or food manufacturers need this stuff in bulk,
it comes in this huge bucket.
Then we have sour cream, sugar, salt, egg yolk,
which are all normal so far.
Yo, you should use that egg
that you dissolved the shell from.
That would've been funny.
Remember that?
I do.
'Cause it was terrifying.
Then there's xanthan gum, which acts as a thickener.
You may remember this as a component of the thick water
in our last episode of "Fast Food Chemistry."
You know I didn't forget.
Mm!
Ah.
Thick-It thick water.
It's like water, but weird!
Polysorbate 60, also called Tween 60,
is used as an emulsifier that helps water-based
and oil-based ingredients blend easily
and prevent their separation in food.
Its other main purpose is a solubilizer and surfactant
in cosmetic items like makeup and lotion.
There's preservatives potassium sorbate
and sodium benzoate.
Sodium benzoate inhibits the growth of microorganisms,
but it's also used in a mixture
that makes fireworks whistle.
Luckily for us,
it's not the explosive part of that mixture,
which I'm 100% glad,
because that would be horrifying.
Yet, it is another GRAS additive.
And then we have calcium disodium EDTA.
What does EDTA stand for? You're wondering.
It's ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid.
Calcium disodium EDTA is actually used
as a medicine to treat lead and plutonium poisoning.
Calcium disodium EDTA is the chemical used
in the film "Blade" to kill vampires.
What?
We could not independently verify
the effectiveness against the undead,
so we'll go ahead and take the screenwriter's word for it.
[dramatic rock music]
Or will we? Conner?
Yah!
Eat the sauce if you've been exposed to nuclear waste,
but not if you're a vampire.
Medha: And then finally we have blue cheese,
even more whey protein, and milk.
So, we got our pan spray here,
and we're gonna spray this pan.
And then over here,
we're gonna add some cornmeal
to start leveling out the dough.
Come on. Flip it with your wrist.
Flip it, get in there. Get in there!
♪ I'm transporting you to the Domino headquarters ♪
♪ We are there, making pizza ♪
♪ For all our friends ♪
♪ And I just don't want to poison them ♪
♪ With all these chemicals ♪
All right.
Pizza will go into the oven.
I don't know about that oven.
I don't know, it just looks like ...
I mean, who knows?
How hot could that oven get?
All right.
Whoa, look at that!
Holy moly!
Let's slice it.
This looks phenomenal.
Yeah, I mean, that looks like a pizza.
I don't know if it looks like a Domino's pizza.
Let's --
we're missing a slice, for some weird reason.
Yah!
I'm surprised.
I mean, that looks a lot better
than I thought it was going to be.
Medha: Like every Domino's pizza, they have a garlic crust,
so we gotta add the beautiful garlic sauce.
Cameraperson: That looks like a Domino's pizza!
This literally looks like Domino's pizza!
Literally?
I mean, it looks like a pizza.
This is our pizza, and this is Domino's pizza.
And I have to say, I'm incredibly surprised.
I'm pretty sure we could fool people into thinking
this was the pizza that came out of the box.
If that pizza showed up, I'd be like,
"Nah, something's wrong."
It's the moment of truth.
We're gonna try our pizza.
This is a pretty good pizza!
This part I'm really interested in finding out
if we did a good job,
which is the garlic part.
OK. So this is the Domino's pizza.
Here we go.
So, as you can tell from the back of the pizza,
like I said,
ours could have taken a little more heat.
'Cause you didn't have the crust exposed to the heat,
'cause you had it on that pan.
But I think this one is just,
you can taste the garlic,
and it overpowers everything else,
and that's the one thing that's missing.
Now we gotta compare the ranches.
So, right here, I have our ranch.
Let's try theirs.
All right, this is their ranch sauce.
Honestly, they're not that different.
I think we did a really good job
with the buttermilk ranch sauce.
So, for me watching this,
everything up until cooking,
the execution was perfect,
I would have given her an A.
All the difference is,
as someone who made pizzas professionally
for longer than he cares to admit,
I would say that the cook of the pizza,
it being on a pan with no holes
and being in that tabletop oven,
you're just not gonna get
the same kind of consistent cook.
So, but those things is just, you learn from.
I'm assuming she has not worked in a pizzeria.
And also comes from
making a pizza in an office,
and not a kitchen.
Considering Medha's limitations,
I'll give her an A minus.
I bet it tastes great.
All right, I'm done.
Who would like to have a slice of pizza with me?