Pizza Without Yeast

Ernesto Di Maio grew up in Naples, Italy—the birthplace of pizza. Unfortunately, the chemist is allergic to one of pizza’s key ingredients: yeast. So Di Maio set out to create a crust without these tiny microbes.

Yeast feeds on sugars in flour and releases bubbles of carbon dioxide (CO2 ) as waste. This type of chemical reaction is called fermentation. “The texture, taste, and smell of pizza crust has a lot to do with those bubbles,” says Di Maio, who works at the University of Naples Federico II.

To make a yeast-free crust, Di Maio’s team placed dough made only of flour, salt, and water into an oven-like device. They pressurized the oven by filling it with helium. Then they released the gas slowly so bubbles would form in the dough, causing it to rise as it baked. The result: a yeast-free pizza crust that looked and tasted just like the classic recipe.