3-D printer makes custom pizzas

A Taiwanese firm called XYZ can now create a variety of foods by layering ingredients before baking them in an oven. According to a piece in the Daily Mail Online, the list is growing of all the foods that can be 3-D printed, the most popular recent addition being customized pizzas.

“The printer can currently accommodate up to three tubes of printing ingredients – for example, a cookie dough-like mixture, chocolate for decorating biscuits, or dough, tomato sauce and cheese to form a pizza,” an XYZ spokesman told the Daily Mail Online, which also reported that the XYZ 3-D Food Printer lets users choose from predesigned pizzas or upload their own files, customized to their specific tastes via a touchscreen interface.

The Daily Mail reported that it could be a precursor to creating “Star Trek”’s food replicator, which can create any edible at the touch of a button.

“A batch of biscuits currently takes 10 to 15 minutes in the printer, with 10 minutes baking time,” the spokesman said in the report.

It may take years for such 3-D printers to be in every kitchen, but the prospect of them appearing as kitchen appliances in Asia may be a reality in the near future, the Daily Mail claimed in the article, which also stated that the main barrier is licensing agreements with food ingredient companies.

Large-scale bakeries are expected to utilize such technology before private citizens catch on. The XYZ printer is a concept prototype, but a consumer version is predicted to cost around $2035.