Gonna make homemade pizza again tomorrow - usually I kinda have to do these in pairs to use up ingredients during the timer I start by opening them, but I only have one packet of yeast. So I'll have to either make a grocery stop later (probably would need to anyway) or I can explore the world of yeast-less pizza...
@NovaSquirrel I wonder how well you could make a pizza with baking powder?
-F
@Felthry Some of the no-yeast pizza recipes I looked up did in fact use baking powder, and I do have plenty on hand too... so maybe I'll try that and have a new experience
@NovaSquirrel well, baking powder was invented in the first place to be a replacement for yeast! the idea is that instead of biologically producing the carbon dioxide bubbles, you do it chemically with a weak acid (usually monocalcium phosphate or alum) and a basic carbonate or bicarbonate that gets neutralized to carbonic acid, which breaks down to release water and carbon dioxide
-F
@Felthry Yeah that makes sense! I got it because a recipe called for it but I never knew what it actually did until now haha. That will enable me to have more bread adventures because I have a ton of baking powder I now have a use for
@NovaSquirrel just know it's not a 1:1 replacement for yeast, it makes the bread raise differently and affects the flavor differently! you also may want baking soda (which is just the bicarbonate with no acid) in addition to or instead of baking powder if your recipe already includes a lot of acid like vinegar or citrus or something; baking powder doesn't really work right in a too-acidic environment
-F
@NovaSquirrel it probably wouldn't work too well in a too-basic environment either but you're far more likely to end up with a dough that's too acidic than one that's too basic, not many food ingredients are very basic (likely because basic things in general taste really bitter and sometimes soapy)
-F
@Felthry I mean tomato sauce is acidic, I'm pretty sure? But I have no idea if the toppings matter a lot here. It's not like the sauce is supposed to completely soak through haha.
@NovaSquirrel no i'm talking about stuff that goes into the dough, not the toppings
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@Felthry In that case I'm completely safe haha. Just flour, water, (leavening agent), oil for me. *sometimes* seasoning of some sort
@NovaSquirrel yeah pizza dough tends to be on the simple side, as breads go! you *could* fancy it up but you don't really want too much going on there--it's a pizza crust, not a pannetone or something!
-F
@NovaSquirrel there was apparently a *huge* battle in the industry over baking powders when someone realized you could use phosphates or alum (which react a little immediately, but then further when heated, so they form more CO₂ during the baking process) instead of just tartaric acid (which reacts immediately when water is added), because the people with the older tartaric acid formula did *not* want to lose all that business (they lost all that business)
-F