Italian scientists make pizza dough without yeast

A materials scientist with an allergy to yeast has created a yeast-free pizza dough that still swells like a traditional pizza.

In a new paper published March 22 in the journal Fluid Physics, he and his colleagues report that they have succeeded in creating an unleavened pizza dough - although although so far, the team has only baked pizza bases about 10mm in size without sauce, cheese or other toppings.

The researchers tested it successfully with a very small amount of powder.

"We tried it and it was beautiful, crispy and soft," said Ernesto Di Maio, a materials scientist at the University of Naples Federico II (UNINA) and lead author of the study.

However, Francisco Migoya, head chef at Modernist Cuisine, says he needs to taste the unleavened dough for himself to see if that assessment is accurate. "Yeast does a lot of things to knead the dough, besides fermentation, like the flavors you find, the complexity of the aromas," says Migoya.

Alessio Cappelli, a food technologist at the University of Florence, Italy, says he is also skeptical about the flavor of the dough and about whether this unique new fermentation method will be widely used.

Classic Neapolitan pizza dough contains flour; salt, for seasoning; country; yeast; and road. As the yeast eats up the sugar in the mix, the live microorganisms release the carbon dioxide trapped in the sticky dough, causing it to swell with gas. When the pizza dough is baked, the yeast dies in the extreme heat of the oven, but these air bubbles remain trapped in the crust, giving it a light and airy texture.

Rossana Pasquino, study co-author and UNINA chemical engineer, said: 'The aim was to try to create the texture that we love so much in pizza without the chemical ingredients.'

To achieve this, the team made the pizza dough according to the classic recipe, minus the yeast and sugar. They then placed a small ball of dough into a toaster-sized autoclave, a type of pressure oven commonly used for sterilization that kills bacteria, viruses and fungal spores.

The researchers then pumped gas into the autoclave, to fill the dough with bubbles, and boosted the pressure to 10 atmospheres before carefully releasing that pressure, at just the right time.

"If you brake too late - you release the pressure after the dough thickens - it will crack. If you release the pressure too soon . it won't expand," reveals Di Maio using a technique similar in his lab to inject bubbles into polyurethane, a synthetic polymer.

To make sure the dough's temperature matches that of a typical wood-fired pizza, study co-author Paolo Iaccarino, a UNINA graduate and part-time pizza maker, or cake maker pizza, measured the internal temperature of the dough at the pizzeria where he worked.

After initial success with tiny cakes, the team has now purchased a larger steamer, capable of making normal-sized pizzas.

Their method of making dough isn't exactly accessible, says Pasquino, but in theory it should save people time waiting for the dough to rise. This powder could one day be used to make delicious pizza for people with yeast allergies.