Amy’s Journal

I finally had time, now that school is out, to go visit our new Medford plant that is up and running! It is huge, and really well organized. The day that I went up there they were making the pesto pizza, and it is really interesting to watch the whole process, so I thought I would put the pictures up that I took from that day and explain how the whole thing happens:

First, the dough is made in big vats in the dough room.

Then it is separated into little dough balls that are the right size for each pizza crust.

Then the dough balls are flattened and hand worked to get the perfect crusts, and sent through the oven.

Then the crusts come out of the oven, go down the conveyor belt, and a machine deposits pesto onto each crust.

Then the employees spread the pesto around the pizza as it goes by. I did this for a half an hour and got completely covered in pesto!! It takes a lot of practice to do it right without spraying pesto everywhere.

Then they place six slices of tomato on each pizza.

And scatter broccoli pieces everywhere.

Then someone sprinkles cheese all over the top.

Then the finished pizza heads into the spiral freezer to get frozen. The pizzas actually never stop moving, they spiral up through the freezer on a conveyor belt and come out frozen at the top! That is me and my grandmother Ellie standing next to the pizzas.

After the pizzas are frozen, they are fed into a plastic wrapper that seals around them and is then cut into the individual wrappers.

Then a big fast machine pushes the frozen and sealed pizzas into the boxes.

Then the boxes of pizzas are put into cases.

Then the cases are stacked on big palettes to be shipped out to stores, where they will be bought by a customer, and eventually end up on someone’s kitchen table! Yum!!