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