Steven found out from the blogs that Domino’s Pizza changed their recipe.  He wants to know if anyone tried it.

Domino’s Pizza is a huge international restaurant chain based in the United States, one that managed to grow in the first few decades by guaranteeing that your order would be delivered to your front door within 30 minutes or you’d get it free.  I started to work for them as a delivery driver back in the early 1980’s.  It was the second full time job I ever had, and I was one of those people who raced through the night to get the pizzas to the customers before the time limit expired.

What are the core elements that make a pizza?  The crust, the sauce, and the cheese.  Everything else is flavoring that customizes the dish to your individual tastes.

Back when I was working for them, Domino’s really didn’t pay much attention to the basics.  Although any high volume restaurant must needs rely on pre-packaged ingredients that can be put together simply and quickly, Domino’s really didn’t put too much effort into making sure that their ingredients stood out.  Instead they focused on ways to increase the convenience and ease of preparing the pie, an understandable goal with that “30 minutes or less” guarantee hanging over their profit margins like the sword of Damocles.

The crust would arrive as little frozen domes of dough, and would produce an end product with a starchy taste that would be easily overwhelmed by everything else.  The cheese came grated down into the most amazing little cubes, dry and hard if allowed to thaw before being baked on to a pizza.  Although the tiny cubes arrived at the store in packaging that insisted it was “100% Real Cheese“, it didn’t smell or taste like much of anything.  So far as the sauce was concerned, it appeared to me to be little more than tomato paste thinned with water and flavored with small amounts of salt and sugar.

Slap everything together, put it through the oven, and the result would be a uniform pizza that at least was appealing to the eye.

But the way it looked seemed to be more important than the way it tasted.  The best way to describe the product is with the word “lackluster“.

There are a lot of angry and opinionated people out there that decry the old Domino’s as being the worst thing they ever had the misfortune of putting into their mouths.  This is not reasonable, as the pizza was hardly all that bad.  The problem was that it didn’t have much taste to it at all.

The crust was starchy, and that was about it.  The sauce was red and had a hint of tomato flavor, and that was all it was.  The cheese held everything down and helped to fill you up, but it didn’t really taste like any cheese I had come across before.

A pizza from Domino’s wasn’t horrible, and it wasn’t offensive.  It was bland.  Blah.  Barely worth the effort of chewing.  Food that was perfect for mechanically feeding while parked in front of the TV.

It was also a good choice if you happened to have a large family.  The lack of strong or distinctive flavors might mean that some of the people in the house might not be all that thrilled by their dinner, but they would eat it anyway.

So how did Domino’s not only survive but thrive, particularly since their “30 minutes or free” guarantee has long since gone the way of the dodo?  Mainly by offering a non-offensive, uniform product that held no surprises, and was competitive in price with the other major chains.  Those who loudly cry that the old recipe was akin to sludge crapped out of Satan’s ass ignore the fact that the only way all those franchise stores can be built and stay in business is because a lot of people buy their product every single day.  They wouldn’t do that if the pizza tasted the same way ripe road kill smells.

Pay at Domino’s for a delivery driver at the time was minimum wage plus tips, and the tips made it all worthwhile.  The only way the store owner could entice people to stick around and help him clean up after closing, when the calls stopped coming in and the only money was a few dollars tacked on to your monthly paycheck, was by bribing us with food.  I packed away a lot of bland pizza during my time with the company, which really helped me cut down on my grocery expenses.

It has been close to a quarter century since I delivered my last pizza, and did not buy from Domino’s in all that time.  It isn’t because I was mad or angry for some reason, since that simply isn’t the case.  I was treated both fairly and decently by them, and have no complaints about the time I was working there.  It also isn’t because I was tired of their product, or had become sick of the taste of pizza from all those late night meals the manager fed to us as bribes.

Instead it was due to the fact that tastier fare could be had from other pizza restaurants, even the chains.  I don’t have kids to worry about and supervise, so I don’t need to have bland pizza delivered to my house as an easy way to get the brats to eat their dinner.  Not only that, but I also doubted very highly that the recipe had been upgraded in all that time.  I was certain that any pie I bought from Domino’s would taste exactly like the inoffensive and boring stuff that I last had when Reagan was in the White House.

But, like Steven, I also heard about the new Domino’s recipe through the blogs.  Like him, I was interested to find out what they had changed.  Last Friday I bought a pie with pepperoni and mushrooms to see what all the fuss was about.

Remember those three basic components that make up a pizza?  Crust, sauce, and cheese.  In all areas, Domino’s has improved markedly.

The dough they use has been upgraded.  Not only does this result in a tastier crust, but they sprinkled on some sort of garlic flavoring before it went in to the oven.  Usually this produces a taste that is overwhelmingly salty, so much that I rarely enjoy a pizza that has been so treated.  But, while there was certainly some salt in there, it wasn’t overwhelming.  The seasoning also wasn’t overdone, so there wasn’t dust all over the place after I was done eating.

The cheese, once a filling but unremarkable glop that served as a mortar to hold the toppings on the pie, actually has a taste.  I detected a faint aroma of sharp cheeses, probably a Romano and Parmesan blend that was added to the mix.  Unlike past decades, I could actually taste the cheese in the background.  The sauce and toppings didn’t overwhelm.

The sauce has probably changed the most.  Once little more than thin tomato paste flavored with a little salt and sugar, it is obvious that some effort has been made to make it a more tasty element of the meal.  Although a little saltier than before, the largest difference is in sweetness.  Besides having a lot more sugar, you can tell through both the taste and odor that spices such as basil have also been included.

It seems obvious to me that the change in sauce recipe is intended to produce something similar to those fancy pizzas that Wolfgang Puck have made famous.  If you like a lot of basil in your pizza, then more power to you.  I am not too fond of a pizza that is as sweet as that, though.  It wasn’t as if the taste was overpowering, nor did it ruin the pizza for me since I finished it off without any trouble.  Just keep in mind that it was noticeable with every bite.

The bottom line is that Domino’s have significantly improved their product, and it is worth a look if you consider yourself a pizza connoisseur.  Is the new pizza better than that found at other large chains, such as Papa John’s or Pizza Hut?  I can’t say that definitively, but it seems to me that it at least lifts their pies to the same general level of competency.  Since food preferences are highly personal and subjective, your own mileage is sure to vary.

One way to gauge how far they have come, I find myself interested in trying some of their specialty pizzas in the future.  Back when I was working for them, there was pizza on the menu and nothing else.  For 25 years I had no desire to buy any of their products, not even the stuff that has become available since that long ago time, and now I think I will check out the rest of their menu.

Just not all at once.  One pizza at a time.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 10th, 2010 at 9:27 pm and is filed under Blog Stuff, Food. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.