March 22, 2022 - 1:47pm
Blowing bubbles in dough to bake perfect yeast-free pizza
From Science News: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220322111338.htm
Researchers have developed a method to leaven pizza dough without yeast. The team, which included its very own professional pizza-maker/graduate student, prepared the dough by mixing water, flour, and salt and placing it in a hot autoclave, an industrial device designed to raise temperature and pressure. From there, the process is like the one used to produce carbonation in soda. Gas is dissolved into the dough at high pressure, and bubbles form in the dough as pressure is released during baking.
I'm not advocating it but I think it is interesting.
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This method appears to be a sophisticated variation of the process invented by Dr. John Dauglish in the mid 1800s: Aerated Bread Company - Wikipedia.
That whole article was fascinating, thanks! And the Canadian Weston ended up buying them out. Ha.
What the yeast, or leavening agent, does for us. Blows bubbles in the dough. So why take out the yeast or leavening agent only to try and find another way of doing the same thing?
the Chorleywood Bread Process, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process
which was what the above-mentioned Aerated Bread Company used in the UK.
( I think the equivalent in the US is "Wonder Bread." Can someone confirm? )
@Abe, one application might be a fresh-made pizza vending machine that doesn't have to rely on frozen pizza. Though, frozen self-rising pizzas can be of decent quality IMHO.
I suppose one could also use carbonated water (seltzer) to make a dough with. Probably several ways of introducing carbon dioxide bubbles into a dough, but none of them would provide the other things yeast does in making a dough rise - notably the flavor components.
In my experience store bought seltzer water all seems to have similar levels of carbonation. It would be interesting to see if someone has their own soda making siphon what a higher level of carbonation would do in producing a dough.
People are using cream whippers to make cakes.
I have one but I've only used it for making on-demand whipped cream with N2O capsules (which I find superior in flavour and texture and keepability to using a mixer), and nitro coffee using N2 capsules (which is delicious and way more economical than a shop).
If you expel contents with gas, the tricky bit is the valve system, which can only cope with expelling liquids so there will be a max viscosity it can deal with.
If you try to infuse gas into contents, then let off excess gas before opening the lid, the tricky bit is removing the contents.
I've made nitro coffee both ways... spraying it out, or off-gassing then pouring. I've also removed the remains of foamed whipped cream after using up gas and it was fine with a spatula.