Us Brits love this Italian classic.
Which explains why we slice up around 14 million
pizzas every week.
Spending £2.5 billion on them each year.
Where's the best place to learn how they're made?
This Italian pizza factory, of course!
600 people work here,
producing a whopping 370 pizzas every minute.
I'm Gregg Wallace...
That's like whitewater rafting for pizzas.
..and tonight I'll learn how they guarantee
a crispy crust every time.
450-degree, proper wood-fired oven with a stone base.
I'm Cherry Healey...
It looks like a sample that I don't want to drink!
..and I'll be investigating the complex chemistry behind some
of our favourite toppings.
So, the proteins in mozzarella are just in that sweet spot
where they can melt beautifully.
And historian Ruth Goodman sees
what was on the menu when pizzas first came to Britain.
It's a very familiar list, though. I mean, things like the Margherita,
Four Seasons, La Reine....
Over the next 24 hours,
this factory will produce 400,000 pizzas!
And we're serving you a slice of the production process.
Welcome to Inside The Factory.
This factory in the foothills of Italy's Dolomite mountains
makes an astonishing 500 different varieties of pizza.
They ship all over the world, tailoring their recipes
to the individual taste of each country.
For Italy, that means ultra-traditional
thin crust margheritas.
And. for Germany, a deep base topped with fish.
But our pizza is made for the British market
and the shelves of supermarket chain Iceland.
And it's their stone-baked, spicy, double pepperoni version
that we're here to learn how to make.
And, as with any pizza, it's all about the base.
This one is thin and crispy with a chewy crust.
# I know you can tell just by looking at my face
# A word about my weakness
# I'm totally addicted to bass... #
Production begins in the intake area with the delivery of wheat flour.
Ten of these tankers arrive here every week,
each one laden with 30 tonnes of the stuff.
Gabriele Bot oversees all raw ingredients that arrive onsite.
Gabriele, good to meet you.
HE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN
This is the beginning? Yes.
We take the flour right here.
So, this is more or less 240,000 pizzas.
A quarter of a million pizzas? Yes. From that flour?
Even I can't eat that many pizzas.
Tell me, what is the perfect flour for a pizza?
We use flour type zero.
When I read cookery books, a lot of it is zero zero - double zero.
Why do you use zero and not...
We prefer the zero because it's a little less refined flour
and gives a crispier product that we want.
Flour comes in many different grades
and subtle variations can make a big difference to the finished product.
The kind they're about to unload here is a strong, all-purpose milled
wheat flour, like you might use to make a loaf of bread at home.
Let's get this flour off the lorry. OK.
The pipes are connected,
and our frozen pizza production line begins.
I love that pipe, it's dancing!
It looks like an eel.
The flour is blown along this pulsating pipe,
and into one of four 30-tonne silos,
where it's stored before joining the other seven ingredients
that will go into our pizza base.
Every 12 minutes, a batch of 250 kilos
is sent to the mixing area, where I'm meeting
operations manager Alberto Urli.
Alberto, I'm Gregg. Hi, Gregg.
I love making pizza. I'm very excited to be here!
Is this the start of the process?
Yeah, yeah. Here, mainly, we prepare the dough.
That is the core of the process of the pizza.
The base of our pizza is a simple dough,
but we're not starting with my flour.
So, first of all we need to load the yeast.
This is industrial yeast. It's fresh,
it's ready to give its power to our dough.
That really's got a strong odour. Yes.
Tell me - you're the expert - what does yeast do?
I know I can't make bread without it, but what does it do?
Yeah. The yeast is, er...
..creating gas into the dough.
How does it do that?
It's like a small animal that is eating something
from the flour and it's creating gas.
So, the yeast is eating... Yeah. ..and it's...
MAKES FART SOUND
Yeah, yeah.
I don't think I'm ever going to look at pizza the same way!
Does the yeast go in? Yeah.
Yeast is the magical ingredient which transforms our dough.
It eats up the naturally-occurring sugar in the flour,
producing CO2 gas, making the dough rise.
Good? The second one.
Salt? Yeah.
Next up is salt, which helps strengthen the dough
and adds flavour.
Followed by a sugar called dextrose,
which will provide extra food for our yeast.
How many pizzas will we get out of here?
With this dough, around 1,800 pizzas.
Nearly 2,000 pizzas? Yeah.
250kg of the flour I saw arrive is dosed in
followed by 125 litres of water
and sunflower oil, which will make the dough easier to stretch.
Can I press the button? Yeah, let's start.
The mixing process begins.
So, that's just mixing like I would mix at home with a big spoon?
Yeah, more or less.
Ten minutes, mixing at 280 RPM, is enough
to combine these ingredients.
Whoa! That is a big...
That is more like bubble gum right now. Yeah.
OK, this is going to rest, right? Yeah, for five hours.
Five hours? Yeah.
And how do you want it to be after it's rested?
We want a more relaxed dough because we need to create
the perfect round of the pizza.
What would happen if we tried to make pizza now with this?
It would be a disaster. Would be impossible to get the right shape
because it's impossible to stretch.
Where does it rest? Upstairs.
It goes upstairs to bed? Yeah!
OK.
In the one hour and 43 minutes since it arrived at the factory, my flour
has been working very hard, becoming dough.
But now it gets a chance to have a breather as it trundles
along 30 metres of mechanical conveyors and lifts...
..before it's tucked into the resting room for 40 winks.
Today in Britain, we spend more on takeaway pizza
than we do on fish and chips.
Ruth is on the trail of the man
who first brought us a PIZZA the action.
In the late '50s and early '60s,
all things Italian became super-fashionable in the UK.
But there was one thing missing from the cafes
and spaghetti houses -
pizza.
Italian immigrants had tried and failed to introduce pizza
to the Brits, but it took a man from Peterborough
to really make us fall in love with it.
I interviewed Peter Boizot in 2018 about the first pizza he tasted
70 years earlier in Italy.
I went to Florence.
Delightedly, they made for me a pizza.
The first one I'd ever had or seen.
And what was it like? Well, it was good. Tasty...
..the dough had risen properly.
It had, of course, a lot of mozzarella cheese on it.
When he came back to London, Peter couldn't find what he felt
was a proper pizza anywhere.
So, in 1965, he decided to set up his very own pizzeria.
What's unique is a special oven, a hot oven,
so I went over to Italy and contacted
a wonderful man - Signor Notaro -
and he sent me a specially-designed pizza oven.
In order to get it into my restaurant,
we had to knock the wall down...
..because it was too big for the door!
What was the name of your restaurant?
Pizza Express.
Peter's first pizzeria was here in Wardour Street in Soho,
today at the very heart of Chinatown.
And that very first restaurant is still here
and still serving pizza.
The restaurant chain's biographer, Matthew Reville, believes this place
hit upon a recipe for success right from the start.
What were they serving in that very first restaurant?
I've got the menu here.
It shows you what they had, and the first thing that will strike you
is there's no pasta, salad, desserts or dough balls on there.
It's all pizzas. It's a very familiar list, though.
I mean, things like, you know, obviously the Margherita,
the Four Seasons, your mushroom pizza, your La Reine.
When Peter first set up the restaurant,
he could see the buzz of pizzaiolos, throwing dough in the air
and making them in front of people.
However, it was the food that was the real selling point.
It was eating from an authentic wood oven, eating real Italian pizzas
that was so successful.
How did it go, then, from being one, small shop in Wardour Street
to being this great, big chain?
His plan wasn't to make a lot of money.
His plan was to create this different type of dining
experience, which was inexpensive,
lots of energy, lots of buzz around the restaurant,
and it was so successful
that he basically had to keep on expanding it.
And where Peter led, others followed.
Today, around 5,000 restaurants and takeaways across the UK sell
a slice of the big pizza pie.
You know, if Peter Boizot hadn't first given us
that taste of the real thing,
I'm not sure that we'd be the nation of pizza lovers that we are today.
Back in Italy, our pampered pizza dough has been having a little nap
in the resting room.
Yeast has trapped tiny bubbles of CO2 gas inside it,
causing it to rise and double in size.
It's now what bakers call a relaxed dough,
meaning it'll be easy to stretch into shape.
Six hours and 43 minutes into the process,
it heads to the beginning of the pizza line.
OK!
HE LAUGHS
Well, that's lighter.
Was very tired at the start,
and now is more relaxed.
But our dough's had enough time lazing about.
Now it needs to get in shape
and this machine is going to give it a workout.
What is happening in here, Alberto?
So, this is our knocking back process.
We portion the right quantity of dough
that we need for each single pizza.
# Work, work, work, work, work, work
# You see me I be work, work, work, work, work, work... #
The dough drops down into the machine. Blades rotating
at 150 RPM slice 190g pieces off
before two super sized rolling pins massage them,
creating six perfectly formed balls every four seconds.
At home, I get the dough when it has rested and I move it.
Yeah. Yeah. Like this.
Is this what's happening? This process is simulating
what you're doing in your home with your hands.
We fold
and we create this ball
and, in this way, we give the right strength to the dough.
It's working it. It's working the dough.
That is a powerful little machine, right?
This vigorous massage alters our dough's structure.
Each ball is held together by a net of protein called gluten,
and, as it's kneaded, the strands of this gluten align,
giving the dough more strength.
Important, because it's about to rise again
and be stretched to its limits.
So, where are these dough balls going?
Are going into this big cell.
This is a proofing cell.
Just like me, after a vigorous workout,
the dough balls deserve a little R&R.
They drop into individual cups and head off for their version
of a sauna, in this huge proofing cell.
Inside, the temperature is 35 degrees Celsius
and humidity hits 75%.
Perfect conditions for the yeast, which continues eating those natural
sugars and pushing out more CO2.
After one hour, they emerge.
Oh, wow!
It's very light. Yeah. Very light.
It almost feels...
..feels like a small cushion. Yeah.
If you want, you can stretch it.
Wow that is much lighter than my dough at home.
That feels like silk.
The yeast relaxes the gluten net,
and that's why it's easy to stretch.
After their pampering at the pizza spa, our dough balls are now ready
for their next treatment.
So, how do I make this into a perfect round shape?
Not easy, ah, Gregg?
Not good? No, let's try it with this machine.
We take the ball, we put it in the middle of these two hot plates.
That's very hot. I can feel that heat.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then we press. Can you help me? Yeah.
Let's go.
Two plates heated to 157 degrees Celsius
push together, creating an eight-millimetre thick
25cm diameter base.
And here you are, a perfect circle.
This is the result.
That's hard. Yeah.
You have a skin. It's like you've sealed it. Yeah.
In this way, it's impossible for the water of the tomato sauce
to go inside the dough.
How many pizzas do you do every day?
About 400,000 pizzas. But you can't do 400,000 like this.
Of course, we have a big machine with many heads like that,
but, unfortunately, I cannot show you because it's our secret machine.
This is not the first time it has happened inside a factory.
Someone has a secret machine I can't see. Yeah.
Secret it may be, but the results are clear.
Now our perfectly flat heat-sealed pizza bases are pricked
with 278 4mm-deep holes to let excess moisture escape and ensure
they're perfectly crispy when cooked in the oven.
Bases sorted. Next we need some sauce.
But why do we always reach for tomato?
Cherry's visiting a farm in Worcestershire that grows
560 tonnes of them a year.
I want to discover what it is about the tomato that makes it the perfect
partner for pizza, pasta and so many other classic dishes.
Helping me isolate the taste that makes it so special
is food scientist Professor Lisa Methven.
Oh, look at this!
So, what we're going to do is think about what is actually
in the middle of this that's got the taste in it.
If we cut that tomato up, blend it in a mixer, we can spin out
all of the taste parts of it, and it actually looks like this.
Oh. Ugh!
It looks like a sample that I don't want to drink.
Well, I'm going to get you to!
What we consider as flavour is made up of both taste and smell,
so, in order to discover the underlying, true tomato flavour
I need to block my nose.
I'm going to get you to wear the nose clip. What I want
you to concentrate on is just what's on your tongue.
Bottoms up.
It's a little bit sharp.
A little bit tart.
I guess a little bit sweet.
I can almost taste savoury.
It doesn't really taste like tomato at all.
That is extraordinary.
So, when I couldn't smell it, I felt like I could taste savoury.
Absolutely you can taste the savoury taste, that's called umami.
So, I've heard of umami but I've never really known what it is.
It's one of your five basic tastes.
So, you've got your sweet taste, sour, salt, bitter
and the fifth one's your umami taste.
One of the taste compounds in there is glutamate.
That gives you umami taste,
and, actually, that is present in so many foods
but particularly high in the tomato.
High levels are also found in mushrooms, soy sauce,
and Parmesan cheese -
all ingredients that, like tomatoes, act as brilliant
flavour enhancers in cooking.
Umami taste compounds work really well together
so, you can take a tomato and put it with other foods that have some
savoury component to them because you get all this great
synergy from the taste together.
So, when it comes to umami, more is more.
They love to work together. Absolutely.
The glutamate that gives tomatoes this magical, savoury taste
can increase by as much as 600% as they ripen.
So, the redder, the better.
However, not all varieties are created equal.
If I'm making a savoury dish, what's the best tomato to use?
Tomatoes like these, really, these plum tomatoes.
If you just rip that open, if you can, you'll see what I mean.
Look at that.
This part of the tomato here, the bit with all the seeds
and that juicy bit in the middle,
that's really where you get most of the taste components.
So, if I buy ready-made tomato sauce,
is it likely to be a plum tomato?
Yeah, typically plum tomatoes are used for cooking, are used
for making sauces. So, it's a hard-working tomato,
this, particularly? Yeah, absolutely.
When it comes to tomatoes, it's all about the umami.
Now I understand the chemistry,
I can see why they're the basis of so many of our favourite
dishes, including pizza.
Back at the factory,
after seven hours and 55 minutes of careful preparation,
our bases are made and they're ready
for that all-important tomato topping.
So, I'm heading to the sauce preparation area.
Every pizza sauce they use here is mixed up fresh onsite.
And they all start with 100% Italian tomatoes.
Gabriele!
Good to see you again.
Hello. I'm guessing this is tomato puree, right?
How much of this do we use for our mix, for our sauce?
One and a half of a drum.
The first step to creating our sauce...
Whoa! Whoa!
..is to pump the concentrated puree into a 500-litre mixer.
And now what? Push the green buttons. Keep it pressed.
This is going to be messy, isn't it?
Whoa! Whoa, whoa, whoa!
Let's go.
Using puree means the factory has a supply of perfectly ripe,
umami-rich tomatoes year-round - not just at harvest time.
It's working!
It's definitely working.
Five minutes later...
..our mixer is full.
So we've got our lovely tomatoes, beautifully pumped by me.
Now we put the olive oil in. Olive oil! Yeah. OK.
It gives a little bit of flavour and a creaminess of the sauce.
With a simple push of the button,
five litres of olive oil is dosed in.
OK. Now? Now we can put the water.
Followed by 125 litres of water and, next, seasoning.
What is in here?
It's made of dry oregano,
sugar, salt and yeast extract.
A paddle, spinning at 280 RPM,
blends our 500-kilo batch of sauce together.
How many pizzas will it cover?
7,000 pizzas.
Half a tonne of sauce for 7,000 pizzas.
Beautiful mix.
It's pumped through 55 metres
of overhead pipes towards the sauce applicator...
..where our naked pizza bases receive a splash of colour.
Alberto! I'm back. Nice to see you again.
That is my tomato sauce.
I made it with Gabriele. Yes, yes.
Here we distribute 60g of tomato sauce on each one.
Does my sauce look better than the normal sauce?
Or the same? It's better.
What is that?
That's a camera machine.
That is taking a picture for each pizza.
Why? Because, in this way,
you can give to this machine the right position of each pizza,
so we want to be sure that we are spreading exactly in the centre.
Information is sent straight from the cameras
to these knobbly rollers, which adjust their position depending
on the location of the pizza bases below.
It looks like you are putting the sauce on with a corn cob!
126 nodules on each roller help pick up the bright red sauce
and distribute it evenly around our nude bases.
They work tirelessly to cover
the modesty of 20 pizzas every ten seconds.
Wow!
That is a slow-moving river of pizza.
Reminds me of, like, a military procession.
We had a batch of 1,800 pizzas? Yeah, yeah.
How long would it take before they all went past us?
So, at the moment, this line is running at 100 pizzas per minute.
Is it? Yeah, so it means that that batch will go in 18 minutes.
And these are all for the UK? Yeah.
We're eight hours, 32 minutes and 40 seconds into production
and, even though they're only partially dressed
without their toppings on,
our saucy saucers of dough are on their way to a hot date.
They strut, six at a time, into this huge, four-metre-high,
12.5-metre-long conveyor oven,
where they'll face temperatures
far higher than any domestic oven could manage.
How hot is that oven? 450 degrees.
450 degrees? Yes.
And if you didn't start the cooking process here, we would never get
that crispy base, would we? Yes.
It can't take very long to cook these pizzas.
No, 80 seconds.
80 seconds? Yes.
That is impressive... Yeah.
..but it's not authentic, like a wood-fired oven, is it?
Yes! Of course it is.
How?
We use this.
Wood pellets? Yes.
That is a wood-fired oven? Yes.
I can see the embers coming off!
Why is wood so good?
Because it's aroma. You understand, aroma? Yeah.
Not the capital of Italy. Yeah!
The smell, the fragrance. Yes.
What is your conveyor belt made from?
It's made of natural volcanic stone.
It's from Etna volcano, from Sicily.
You have a conveyor belt made of stone? Yes.
It turns out stone-baked means just that - cooked on stone.
The sizzling rock used here is porous, which helps the air
circulate around our pizzas and draw steam away,
ensuring a perfectly crisp base.
450-degree wood...proper wood-fired oven... Yeah. ..with a stone base...
Yes. ..to crisp up the bottom.
I'm learning so much. I'm very impressed.
# I want some hot stuff
# I need hot stuff... #
Exactly 80 seconds after their rocky ride through the oven began,
our pizzas emerge at the other end.
Now I can see that volcanic rock very clearly.
How does the crust puff up like that? It just gets much bigger.
Inside that dough, there is the gas
that was produced by the yeast
and, now, with the temperature, the gas increases the pressure
and the gluten net is like the balloon that is inflating.
That pizza is cooked, right?
In fact, now the pizza is partially cooked
because we put the topping after the oven.
You don't want to cook the toppings before we get it? No.
When we put it in the oven, the rest of the base and the topping
will cook the same.
Are you spraying water on there?
Yeah, yeah. We are spraying water to cool down the base
because, in a few minutes, we will top with mozzarella cheese.
We've got thin, crispy bases and tasty tomato sauce
but it's no use getting all that right
if you top them with the wrong cheese.
Cherry's on a melty mission.
# Freak me, baby
# Let me lick you up and down... #
Have to admit, whether it's deep pan or thin and crispy,
is there anything better than that beautiful,
melted, golden cheese on a pizza?
But is mozzarella the best choice scientifically?
# Let me lick you up and down... #
I'm heading to the University of Reading for a pizza cheese
showdown with food scientist Dr Stuart Farrimond.
Hi, Dr Stu. Hi, Cherry, great to see you.
What have we got here?
A variety of cheeses because there is some serious science
behind getting that perfect cheese.
First, we're assessing meltability.
Not every cheese melts, so, one of the most important factors
is how acidic the cheese is
and we measure that with the PH.
So, we're going to test that now with these different cheeses.
We're measuring the PH levels of some popular varieties.
We'll start at this end with blue cheese - we've got Stilton.
One of my favourites.
Stinky cheese!
The stinkier, the better.
In we go.
A lower number is very acid.
A higher number is more alkaline.
What we're looking for is a PH of between 5 and 5.9.
Ideally in the middle.
5.3 is the sweet spot.
So, what you can see already is that it's a much higher number.
6.27 already.
And that means that it's less acidic.
Low acidity tells us about the protein network of the Stilton.
It's like this ball of elastic band. It can't get apart
cos the proteins are too tightly bound together.
So that, when you melt it,
they don't really have that lovely, soft, melty,
stringy effect. They just stay like this.
Next up, crumbly feta.
In we go.
It's landed at 4.26. What does that mean?
Well, the feta is too acidic.
High acidity makes the protein network too loose.
So when you melt it... It will actually burn rather than melt.
Third up is mozzarella.
Probe that cheese!
Bang in the middle between 5 and 5.9. It's in the melting zone.
So, the proteins in the mozzarella, they're just in that sweet spot
where they can melt beautifully
because it has got the perfect acidity. Yes,
but there's another reason that makes mozzarella
so good for pizza and that is the stringiness. Yes.
And it's the way in which it's made.
Mozzarella is kneaded, just like pizza dough,
which gives it extra stretchability.
And that's why it has the long, lovely, cheesy stringiness? Mm-hm.
So, to make our ultimate pizza, feta and blue cheese are out? Out.
So, mozzarella is in. Are there any other cheeses we should try?
Yes. There are other cheeses that are in the melting zone.
We've got here some cheddar and we've got some Gruyere.
They're all between five and 5.9.
But the only way to find out which is best
is to do some experiments. And you're going to hate this -
we're going to have to make some pizza. Yes!
We're topping identical plain tomato basses with our three cheeses.
In you go.
After ten minutes cooking,
there are clear visual differences.
All right.
They look absolutely gorgeous.
There we go. Thank you. Thank you.
So here we've got our lovely pieces -
Gruyere, cheddar and mozzarella.
So, I want to point out to you something with the cheddar.
You can see here that you've got oily patches,
and what's happened there is the fat has separated out
as this oil. So, that's not ideal.
Cheddar's high fat content makes it look unappealing.
Gruyere looks more promising.
But look here at the Gruyere.
You can see there's blistering if you look round the edges. Mm.
And that's because there's quite a lot of moisture in Gruyere. Yeah.
And, so, as it heats up, the water turns to steam and it comes
up as these bubbles, this blistering that we see. When the bubbles burst,
then you get a rough surface, and that helps the browning.
So, why do we want the browning effect? That's where
all the flavour is. That's where the magical reaction is happening.
But mozzarella is the clear winner.
If we go to the mozzarella, this has even more moisture in it,
and, so, you've got more of this bubbling effect.
So, the mozzarella is good because it browns faster
without separating into oily pools.
You've got it. Mozzarella is the winner. It's got my vote.
Science confirms tradition.
Great meltability and beautiful browning make mozzarella
the perfect pizza cheese.
We're eight hours and 34 minutes into the pizza-making process.
As they emerge from the oven,
our pizzas take a spin along 100m of computer-controlled
conveyor belts, gently cooling from 90 degrees Celsius
to 35 as they go.
Any that aren't up to scratch
are unceremoniously dropped off the line.
Those that pass muster are now cool enough to be topped with cheese,
which is, of course, 100% mozzarella.
And grated fresh to order onsite.
Coming through!
HE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN
HE LAUGHS
They get through an astonishing ten tonnes of the stuff every day.
Alberto. Oh, yeah.
Does it go in there? Yeah, because we want it on the pizza, so, please,
let's load the machine. Just throw it in?
Yeah. Yeah.
This cheese has 1% chives.
Fantastic, Gregg.
Which add colour and a subtle hint of onion.
Perfect.
My freshly grated mozzarella falls onto a conveyor belt,
which carries it to the waterfall distributor.
Look, it's coming there, and is flowing through the machine
and is topping the pizza.
As the cheese drops into the distributor,
148 individual metal fingers help disperse it evenly onto the pizza
bases below. It's helping to have always the same quantity
of mozzarella cheese for each pizza.
That's where it's holding,
and these wheels, they are sifting...
..and making sure this cheese does not come out too fast. Exactly.
So, it's dropping like light rain. Yes.
Do you know how much cheese actually ends up on each pizza?
Yeah. 50g.
More cheese is on the belt than the pizza.
Look, it's blowing into the conveyor, then up again,
and again into the machine.
So, no waste.
Some cheese must go round 50 times!
No, no, no, no.
In the average, we calculated that it's flowing only three times.
I like it. I think it's pretty.
So far, we've made a basic Margherita but...
..pepperoni is the topping we reach for most often
in the supermarket,
accounting for a fifth of all the pizzas we buy.
It's my favourite, too.
So, how do they make this famous, spicy sausage?
Over to Cherry. In Austria?
Yes, Austria.
Home of rolling hills,
alpine chalets and smoked sausage.
Because pepperoni isn't Italian.
It's an American take on salami.
So, here I am, in Austria, at the largest pepperoni factory
in the country, where every day they turn 50 tonnes of meat
into 10,000 spicy sausages.
It's all overseen by Gerhard Lanz.
Meat delivery.
Each batch begins with a 400kg delivery.
What kind of meat is this?
This is pork shoulder, and this special trimming for pepperoni.
You can see here, the fat is very, very low.
Maximum 10% fat.
It's a very, very lean meat.
This fresh pork...
Chops away!
Aufwarts.
..is combined with an equal quantity of frozen,
but a quarter of our finished pepperoni will be made up
of pork back fat.
Back fat is very, very urgent for texture in the pepperoni.
When you have pepperoni, it has little bits of fat in it,
and that comes from adding the back fat in. Correct. OK.
Pepperoni is a cured sausage,
meaning that it's preserved rather than cooked,
which calls for an unexpected ingredient.
You start with the starter culture. The starter culture, like cheese.
Yes. So, this is bacteria?
It's a bacteria. It's very, very important for the fermentation
of the pepperoni. In pepperoni?! Yeah.
Why do you ferment pepperoni?
This is for stabilise the pepperoni.
So, it's a kind of preservative method? Yes.
The fermentation process creates an acidic environment in the meat,
helping to prevent the growth of any harmful bacteria.
P is to start. Is that P for pepperoni?
P for pepperoni, yes.
With the push of a button,
our pork pours into the chopper...
Here comes the meat. In it goes.
..which minces it into a smooth texture.
And in goes our starter culture, along with another preservative.
Salt! Yes.
The salt's job is to draw moisture out of the meat.
The whole thing. The whole thing?! Yes.
And now to create that famous spicy pepperoni flavour.
That's a lot of chilli!
A seasoning mix containing ground chilli, pepper, nutmeg, garlic,
ginger and paprika,
which gives it that traditional deep, red colour.
Great, your first pepperoni!
Yeah!
Two minutes later...
It's like a meat wave.
..we have perfectly seasoned spicy pork.
Might as well pull my weight around here. Yeah.
Off to the filler! Up to the filler.
It's the moment I've been waiting for.
Wahey!
Can I make a sausage? Yes.
Yes! Press the green. Press the green button. Yes.
And hold that. And hold here.
I'm not going to mess it up? Ready? Start. Yeah.
Under high pressure,
our spicy pork meat is forced into a very thin casing. And stop.
Oh, God. It's so fast!
Wow, and they're so long.
Look how many I made!
They're chopped to exactly 1m in length.
Holy moley! That is a long old stick of pepperoni.
That is amazing.
Look at it.
Then, they're taken to one of 30 60-square-metre smokers.
In we go.
Each one holds 6,000 pepperoni.
Let's start the process! Yes.
Cold beach wood smoke envelops the sausages, giving them a smoky
flavour, but, importantly, it doesn't cook them.
After four days, they're transferred to a maturation chamber,
where the meat is cured.
Over the next two weeks,
the water inside the sausages evaporates out,
causing them to shrink by up to 25%.
Wow, what an amazing sight.
The colour is so much darker and richer,
and it's so much harder.
I mean, is it ready now?
Next step is the pealing. All right. Lead the way.
The cases are removed.
Oh, that's so fun. Whee!
And they're chopped in half.
Cut that off.
It's so good. You can see all the different parts.
This is the different parts from the back fat
and from the lean meat, from the shoulder.
So, the lean meat, the back fat, the spices... Yes.
..everything that's gone into it.
After 20 days of production,
our Austrian pepperoni are packed 25 to a box,
ready for the pizza factory.
Over the border in Italy,
eight hours 37 minutes and 40 seconds into production,
our cheese and tomato pizzas
are waiting for Cherry's spicy sausage...
..which is applied by the pepperoni applicator.
Oh, I love this.
This has got to be the best part of the whole factory!
She's got to hold on to that while it's so long...
Yeah. ..because it will break. Yeah.
That is like a crazy game!
Is that even real? Yes.
Did they go in every hole? Yeah.
Not that one?
Why not that one?
No, because we need only 12 slices for each pizza. Ah!
This pepperoni,
is this an authentic pizza topping for Italian?
No. No. In Italy, we have a different kind of salami.
Is this more spicy... Yeah. ..than you are used to?
It's more hot.
There's got to be an easier way!
Right... Whoa, whoa!
Piano, piano.
As the pepperoni rocks back and forth,
blades lubricated with water
slice off 2mm-thick pieces of meat.
A laser tells the machine when there's a pizza underneath,
and 12 bits of our spicy sausage are dropped onto each one.
Brilliant.
I can actually see the pepperoni dropping.
Yeah.
12 on each pizza.
Exactly. How many pizzas going through here, Alberto?
Around 100 per minute.
Yeah? What are these ladies doing?
Because the pepperoni is on the pizza.
Yeah, but sometimes a slice is missing.
And we want exactly 12 slices per each pizza.
We don't want it perfect.
That is the beauty of the pizza.
Yeah, but... You cut the slice,
sometimes you are lucky, sometimes...
Yes, yes, I understand, but here we are in Italy.
I'm sorry. And we want a good-tasting pizza
and a good looking pizza.
OK, OK.
Italian precision has applied our spicy Austrian sausage.
But because us Brits love loads of toppings,
we're only halfway there.
Next up, it's precisely 20g of red onion,
applied just like our cheese, by a waterfall applicator.
Now time for even more pepperoni.
Which relies on something a little more low tech.
They are putting on more pepperoni?
Yeah, they are hand topping the small pepperoni.
So, it's a different taste.
Because we want to have a good balance
of taste of meat in the pizza.
So, first, we need to wear this.
For each one, we need 10g.
OK, try.
Not bad. Not bad.
OK. OK.
Why can't this be done with a machine?
Because this material is not easy to top with a waterfall machine,
and we want a good distribution.
So, we prefer to top by hand.
I'm rubbish at this!
I'm OK at eating them,
but there is no way I can do this as fast as these ladies.
That looks simple.
But you are doing like two pizzas every second.
Yeah. I cannot do this. Yeah.
The final topping is 25g of fiery jalapeno peppers.
Eight hours, 38 minutes and 40 seconds
after we began, our pizzas are complete.
And ready for the freezer.
That's it. That's the finished pizza, right?
Yeah.
Are you spraying them with water again? Yeah.
Because, in this way, then the first part of the freezing tunnel,
the water will freeze immediately. So we freeze the topping exactly
where it is at this stage.
And when I get it home and cook it,
it will be the same as that? Exactly the same.
100 pizzas a minute head into the freezer.
Where they'll stay for 30 minutes in an icy -40 degrees Celsius.
We take it for granted that we can make and freeze a pizza here,
in Italy, and then take it from a freezer in a supermarket
in the UK in just over a week.
Ruth is on the trail of the technology
which makes this possible.
These days, you can get any food you like, any time of year,
from anywhere in the world.
But, 150 years ago, it wasn't quite so easy.
I'm discovering who and what revolutionised our eating habits
with food historian Polly Russell.
Polly! Hello! Hello!
I brought us a pizza. Thank you very much.
Why on Earth are we meeting in Greenwich?
Well, we're here by the Cutty Sark,
what was one of the fastest ships of its day in the 19th century,
a merchant ship that would bring goods from all around the world.
But one thing they weren't carrying as cargo on ocean-crossing voyages
was fresh food.
Only preserved or tinned goods could be transported.
And I suppose this is sort of the moment when places like New Zealand
and Australia are really starting to produce food on a massive scale.
Particularly in Australia and New Zealand,
there are millions of sheep being used to produce wool.
Now, there are not big enough populations in those countries
to consume all the meat.
So, you've got this surplus of meat that is being wasted
and you've got growing populations in Europe that want meat.
So, the question is how do you resolve that problem?
So, how did they do it?
Well, you can't transport livestock
that sort of length of journey.
So, you need a way to chill or freeze that meat.
So, couldn't you just, sort of, like, pack a whole ship
full of ice? When you see...
..the length of this journey.
I mean, this is 14,000 miles, coming through the tropics.
There's absolutely no way the ice is going to last.
And there is also nowhere to pick it up. Right.
This problem was solved in the 1970s when a company called Bell-Coleman
produced a freezer suitable for installation on board ships.
A simple heat exchanger,
it sucked warm air from below deck, compressed it, cooled it with water,
and then released it back into the hold.
This is a convincing onboard machine.
It looks sturdy, doesn't it? It does look sturdy.
And, in 1882, the Dunedin became one of the first vessels
to utilise this new technology.
The ship sailed from New Zealand to London
and docked more than three months later with most of its cargo
of 5,000 carcasses in perfect frozen condition.
This took off in a really big way very fast.
This technology becomes really important for feeding
the population on imported meat.
But transporting frozen meat across oceans only solved part
of the problem of getting food to the masses.
And Polly is going to show me why.
I have to ask, Polly, glamorous though it is -
and I'm not complaining... I think you are.
..why are we in a lorry park rather than at the Cutty Sark?
Because food can arrive at the ports frozen,
and then how do you get to distribute it across the country?
Particularly in America, where cities, towns can be
hundreds and hundreds of miles away from ports.
What was needed was a freezer truck.
Oh, God, I can feel it from here! A blast of air!
Flippin' heck! Up you go.
Wow, is this cold! This is -16 in here.
And the reason that this is possible is because of this man here.
He is Frederick McKinley Jones.
Frederick Jones was born in 1893 in America's Deep South.
He knew how to fix things.
He was a kind of natural engineer.
And, in 1938,
he'd heard about the problems of transporting food in trucks,
that they couldn't keep it cold.
For a man like him, that was irresistible.
At that time, around 40% of American households had a fridge.
Jones started tinkering around with the mechanics
and made an incredible breakthrough.
He came up with a version that would be strong enough
and would work on a lorry and keep food frozen.
And this is the patent for it.
The technology he installed was very similar
to that in a domestic freezer, but powered by the lorry's engine.
In fact, the truck where we're standing in now is cooled
by a system which was really basically designed by Jones.
That's quite something. Yes.
61 years after the invention that brought fresh New Zealand lamb
to our ports,
Jones brought it all the way to our dinner tables.
The pioneers of frozen transport may not have known it,
but their inventions spawned a multi-billion pound industry.
It turns out that there's gold in cold.
In the factory, our pizzas have spent the last 30 minutes
in the freezer.
And, now, nine hours and ten minutes since I saw the flour delivery,
they're heading out, into the light of the packing hall.
A jet of air blows any ice crystals from the top of each one to ensure
they look their best before wrapping.
So, are they frozen hard now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Really? Yeah.
GREGG LAUGHS
OK.
But this room is warm. Yeah.
How quickly do you want to get these wrapped and into a box?
In two minutes, the pizzas are wrapped, into the box
and arrive to the pallet.
So, we have got two minutes. Andiamo!
With no time to spare,
the conveyor belt whisks our pizzas to the first step
of the packing process.
At the moment, they're wrapped in cellophane, but this is soon
to be replaced with a starch-based alternative.
How is that pizza getting wrapped completely with only one sheet?
Basically, with this plastic film, is created like a tube,
and the film is pulled on.
So, that one roll of film,
that is covering both sides of the pizza?
Yeah. There's not two sheets? No. Just one sheet. One, one.
It's just folded around the pizza to create like a bag.
It's happening so fast, it's hard to see.
Yeah. You can... You can see the speed.
This machine is adjusting the speed to the line.
So, at the moment, we are 5,000 pizzas an hour. Yeah. Wow.
Blades cut each one of our plastic socks,
and the pizzas head through the shrink wrapper,
where they're heated to 220 degrees Celsius
for just two seconds.
That must start to defrost the pizza.
There's not enough energy to defrost the pizza,
but is enough energy
to shrink the bag around the pizza.
But, if you touch it, you can feel - the film is hot
and the pizza is frozen.
Frozen on the bottom, hot on the top.
And that goes cold again very quickly.
Yeah. Very quickly. Here.
My 450kg batch of dough has been transformed
into 1,800 pizzas.
Enough for everyone in Aberystwyth to have a slice for dinner tonight.
Our procession continues along a maze of conveyors.
Wow! I love that! That is like whitewater rafting for pizzas.
They're engineered to ensure they reach the correct packing line.
And, for the British market, they go into cardboard.
The box machine.
Yeah. That's actually one of my favourite bits of any factory.
They amaze me because they look so simple.
So, this machine is opening the box,
is pushing the pizza into the box,
then it's folding this part of the box,
is spraying the glue in this part,
is sealing the box.
In what, one second? Yeah.
Let's say a few seconds.
Listen, Alberto,
we said we had about two minutes to get the pizza round here.
I don't think it's even taken two minutes.
In less than one minute, the pizza is here.
And, then, in another minute, will reach the pallet.
It's fast. It's very fast. Very fast.
Our freshly boxed frozen pizzas are wrapped in bundles of seven
before travelling to the pallet sizer,
where they're stacked six layers high and bound tightly in plastic.
After nine hours and 13 minutes
of mixing, resting,
cooking and topping,
they're ready for the final leg of their journey,
and head to the distribution area.
Factory owner Dario Roncadin is overseeing the operation.
How many pallets are going on that truck?
26 pallets.
Do you know how many pizzas on each pallet? It's 800 pizza per pallet.
So how many pizzas on the truck?
20,000.
That seems like a lot of pizza to me.
Is there a season where you sell more pizza?
Mm... We sell more after Christmas because the people are enough
with, you know, their Christmas dinner
and they want to have a nice pizza.
Big Christmas dinner and then pizza afterwards. Yeah.
Should we leave him, let him load the lorry? For sure.
Thank you.
Every week, six freezer lorries leave this factory
and make the 1,000-mile journey
from the Italian Alps to the Iceland distribution centres
in the UK.
From here, the pizzas head out all over the country
and onto the shelves of the supermarket stores.
Their biggest fans are in Northern Ireland.
I'm surprised that they could make so many frozen pizzas in such
an authentic way, in a wood-fired oven.
However, these flavours are anything but authentic Italian.
They are adapted for the UK market.
And how do we like it?
We like it hot and spicy.
Next time...
This is almost space age!
..I'm in the biggest brewery in Britain...
This production is ginormous.
..where, every year, 600 million cans of lager
roll off the production lines.
That volume of beer is really hard to comprehend.
And Cherry goes in search of the perfect pint.
Can definitely taste the coffee, the chocolate.
It's more like a meal!