Scientists make yeast-free pizza dough that rises like the real thing

A materials scientist with a yeast allergy set out to make a yeast-free pizza dough that still rises like a classic Neapolitan pie.

The team has only baked disks of dough that measure about 0.4 inches (10 millimeters), but they have succeeded in their quest.

The pizzas tasted exactly like the yeast pizza, according to a materials scientist at the University of Naples.

The head chef at Modernist Cuisine told NPR that he would need to taste the yeast-free dough for himself to see if that assessment is accurate. According to Science, a food technologist at the University of Florence has doubts about the dough's taste and whether it will ever be widely used.

Italian physicists wrote a perfect pizza equation because not all heroes wear capes.

A classic Neapolitan pizza dough contains flour, salt, water, yeast, and sugar. The live microbes release carbon dioxide that gets trapped in the sticky dough, causing it to swell up with gas. When the pizza dough is baked, the yeast dies off in the oven but the bubbles of gas in the crust give it a light, airy texture.

The aim was to make the same texture that we love so much in pizza without a chemical agent.

The team made pizza dough without yeast and sugar. They put a small sphere of the dough into a pressurized oven, which is a kind of pressurized oven that is often used for sterilizing.

If you are too late, you reduce the pressure after the dough is.

To ensure the temperature of their dough matched that of a typical wood-fired pizza, study co-author Paolo Iaccarino, a UNINA graduate student and part-time pizzaiolo, or pizza maker, measured the internal temperature of baking dough at the pizzeria where he works.

The team has procured a larger autoclave that can make normal-size pizzas, Science reported. In theory, the dough-making method would save people time waiting for their dough to rise, because it is not accessible to home bakers. It could be used to make pizza for people with yeast allergies.

If you want to make yeast-free pizza dough but don't own an autoclave, fear not. Baking powder and baking soda can be used to raise yeast-free dough. These ingredients generate bubbles of carbon dioxide in a dough mix, but they won't achieve the same texture or taste as a yeasted dough. An acid, such as lemon juice, is often added to such recipes.

The yeast-free pizza dough can be found at NPR and Science.

It was originally published on Live Science.