2023 AIChE Annual Meeting
Inventing a No-Knead, No-Stretch Pizza Crust
Although pizza making has been mostly mechanically operated, kneading has been a challenging and labor-intensive step for chefs and machines. This research project aimed to revolutionize pizza crust preparation by providing a simple alternative method to eliminate the stretching step, taking advantage of the no-knead bread concept. In a moisturized environment, proteins can move around freely and make direct contact with each other to form gluten. However, without the help of kinetic movements, this process would require a longer waiting time, a higher percentage of water, and the dough being in the right shape from the beginning.
After conducting a series of experiments, the project determined the most efficient method could be achieved by increasing the water amount by 75% and maximizing the waiting time of the dough to be 72 hours in the refrigerator plus 3 hours at room temperature both before and after the 72-hour session. While further research is warranted, this research provides an alternative recipe that generates products attaining approximately 70% of the traditional methodâs result by volume. Consequently, further development might lead to an application to an industrial scale to decrease the cost of labor and the need for additional equipment.