Yeast was previously indispensable for the perfect pizza dough. The unicellular organism feeds on sugar, produces carbon dioxide and is thus responsible for the typically light, airy dough. Italian pizzaioli usually leave yeast dough to rise for at least a day before shaping it into a pizza.
You can do without
There is good news for people with yeast allergies. Although there are pizza recipes without yeast that use baking powder or natural yoghurt for a certain airiness, these tricks don’t taste quite like the original. Scientists from the Federico II University in Naples have now published a groundbreaking paper on the subject. You want to have the perfect pizza dough made under laboratory conditions – without any yeast at all.
The team, which includes a professional pizza maker, prepared the dough by mixing water, flour and salt and placing it in a hot autoclave, an industrial device that controls temperature and pressure.
With carbonic acid to the perfect dough
From there, the process is similar to how carbonic acid is made in lemonade. The gas is dissolved in the dough under high pressure, and when the pressure is released during baking, bubbles form in the dough.
“The key to this process is to design the rate of pressure release so as not to stress the dough, which likes to stretch gently,” according to author Ernesto Di Maio.
After many experiments with small samples of dough, the researchers finally came to a satisfactory result, which they published in the journal Physics of Fluids. However, the process is not yet suitable for the production of yeast-free pizzas in large quantities. In a next step, the researchers want to purchase a larger autoclave to test the production of whole pizzas.
Two more years of patience
Di Maio expects to have the technology developed enough to sell it to food producers in two years’ time, if everything works as intended. Until then, pizza fans with yeast allergies will have to be patient. Because you can’t try the method at home without the necessary equipment.
