My Experiment with Pizza

Two months earlier I wanted to do my own Pizza from the scratch. One fine day I did Pizza and found my base was not cooked properly. After a week I tried and the result was same. I was little upset and wanted to give up the pizza making.

My hubby always encourages me, asked me to give one more try. So I started doing all research on the dough making process. Result of my research was yeast reproduction. Yeast is a vital ingredient in baking breads and Pizzas. The articles I read were all insisting on one point - activating the dry yeast. Once again I tried and took more care while doing the yeast activation part. Maintained the lukewarm temperature and added little sugar. This time it was very good as like we buy it from outside.

I have made Pizza's around 5 - 6 times since my first attempt and now i am very comfortable with the dough making process.  My latest Pizza was a Spinach pizza that I made for a food mela that we conduct last week. More on the food mela here.

Did you all know? Yeast is a living fungi.

It is responsible for leavening the dough and imparting a delicious yeast fermentation flavor to the product.

Man used yeast before he knew how to write. Hieroglyphics suggest that the ancient Egyptian civilizations were using living yeast and the process of fermentation to cause their bread to rise over 5,000 years ago.

Invention of the Microscope, identified Yeast is an living micro organism which is responsible for fermentation. Commercial baker's yeast are produced in 20th century only.

There are many types of yeast used in baker's yeast, Nutritional yeast, Brewer's yeast etc.

Baker’s yeast is one of the type which we all familiar with.
Baker’s yeast is produced from the genus and species of yeast called Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
Saccharomyces, refers to “saccharo” meaning sugar and “myces” meaning fungus.
The species name, cerevisiae, is derived from the name Ceres, the Roman goddess of agriculture.

Yeast cell is approximately equal in size to a human red blood cell and is spherical to ellipsoidal in shape.
Since it is very small in size, 1 gram of baker's yeast contains 30 billion yeasts cells.

Yeast reproduction is called as 'budding', during which a new bud grows from side of the old or existing cell wall. This bud breaks away from the mother cell to form a separate cell. This process will take place up to 12-15 times.

During Commercial production, yeast is grown in controlled condition with help of sugar medium. In this conditions yeasts cell reproduces every two to three hours.

To know how yeast are produced pls click here http://www.dakotayeast.com/yeast_functions.html