Whether you keep it simple with a New York-style

slice of cheese or go for Chicago deep dish

loaded with ingredients, all pizzas deliver divine,

rich, cheesy, mouth-watering experiences that

hustle your brain’s pleasure centers into overdrive.

Although the ingredients may change,

all pizza tastes delicious thanks to a complex

chemical symphony of flavor and texture.

Today on Reactions, we want to give you lesson

in chemistry to help better explain the profound

beauty found deep within your favorite pie.

So let’s start with the dough.

Pizza dough is pretty easy to make and has the base

ingredients of flour, salt, yeast, and warm water.

The yeast is actually a living, single celled fungus

that you buy at the store in a dormant state.

It’s normally just called baker’s yeast, but that’s

just laymen’s speak for saccharomyces cerevisiae.

When all of these ingredients are mixed together,

and the yeast is hit with warm water,

it wakes right on up and starts to break down complex

sugars found in the flour, spitting out carbon dioxide

in return, and ultimately making the dough rise.

Once the dough is fully risen and formed into

a pizza shape, the sauce is then added.

Of course, there are all kinds of sauces but all

tomato-based ones have one thing in common – acidity.

Tomatoes are naturally between 4.0 and 4.6 on

the pH scale, but canned tomatoes can be even lower.

This is why some people out there end up getting

acid reflux from overconsumption of pizza.

To balance out an overly acidic pizza sauce,

some people add a tiny pinch of baking soda,

which is basic, making it an antacid

which helps neutralize the acid burn.

On the topic of acids, let’s get to cheese.

Cheese is basically a byproduct of adding acid to milk.

Milk is made up of proteins called casein and whey, as well as fats.

When acids are added, the casein coagulates to

form cheese, and separates from the whey protein.

To make the cheese stronger, cheese makers

add rennin which helps to keep the casein

molecules bound tightly together.

Cheese has historically been used as a way

to preserve dairy, but what makes the pizza

maker cheese of choice - mozzarella - different

is that it’s best eaten freshly made.

It is a super moist, soft cheese, which basically

means that when it’s heated up, it gets really

stretchy and adds in awesome texture

and mouth feel to your pie.

With the basics of pizza down, any pizza maestro

can finish their symphony off with their own

personalized mix of toppings. Different folks,

different strokes, but the final step and

most important is what goes on in the oven,

the place where all toppings become equals.

The first thing to be affected is the cheese.

When cheese meets heat, the fats in the cheese

change from solid to liquid, mozzarella stays

nice and stringy, because calcium ions help

to hold all of the casein proteins together.

Calcium, good for your bones and good for your mozzarella.

Then, when the pizza starts to properly cook,

the holy grail of culinary chemical reactions

begins: the maillard reaction.

At temperatures above 140°C, sugars react with

amino acids to create flavor compounds that give

food that distinct, bold, cooked flavor.

It also is known as the browning reaction

and it happens on the crust, toppings and cheese,

but to add to pizza’s complexity,

under the sauce and toppings, the dough is left

very soft and moist to give every bite

an interesting mixed texture.

Obviously, you’ve all the sudden got

the taste for pizza, so get your phone out

and dial the nearest pizza maestro,

but before you do that don’t forget

to hit the subscribe button there!