Italian scientists hacked pizza physics to make dough without yeast | Hacker News Reader

Italian scientists hacked pizza physics to make dough without yeast

npr.org

There was a company in 1862 that used CO2 to make bread without yeast - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerated_Bread_Company

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/df/af/0e/f09d519... seems to be the patent for it

That’s cool when you consider that C02 is what yeast level bread with when they excrete it during fermentation.

It's hard to wrap my head around the "allergic to yeast" thing. Yeast is present everywhere and in the very air we breath. And as the article described, once something is baked the yeast is essentially dead and inert.

Perhaps it's a quantity thing, or maybe the specific strain used in mass-market yeasts?

My man, there are people allergic to the sun. --- Forget about that. There are people allergic to themselves.

Don't trust your brain to not fuck you up any chance it'll get. Because it will do.

Well, yeah. Allergic to self == "autoimmunity". Happens when body systems (including brain) aren't playing nice with each other. Though the brain is a major immune system organ, whatever we're thinking about at a given moment is highly unlikely to have measurable impact on immune system status.

Probably commercial baker's yeast.

Otherwise, pizza sour dough does not contain yeast other than what's naturally present in the flour. It's grown and multiplied during the process though.

There are people that are allergic to water. That one blows my mind. You are allergic to the very thing that makes up the majority of your body.

Are they allergic to water, or what's in the water?

Actually, scratch that. Before that --- are they allergic or psychosomatically allergic to it?

It’s called aquagenic pruritus.

It’s not an actual allergy, more like a water-induced itching, and yeah everyone you talk to assumes it’s psychosomatic, which kinda sucks.

I very rarely get itchy after taking a shower. It seems to be related to the level of humidity in the air wherever I am, and also time of day. It's very weird, and I can't imagine how annoying it would be to have that happen every single time you encounter water.

Yep, that's aquagenic pruritis.

Lol. Most humans assume everything that doesn't have a common, socially-accepted explanation is psychosomatic.

If you have any chronic condition that affects your ability to function(surprise, most of them do), 80% of people out there will just cheerfully gaslight and abuse you without batting an eye.

It's "immune mediated", meaning that there is indeed a response by the immune system. Unsurprisingly, histamines and other inflammatory markers are detected. Sometimes anti-inflammatories can help.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aquagenic_pruritus

You’re absolutely correct, my friend.

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20160915-the-woman-who-is...

It's not psychosomatic. But they aren't really sure what causes it.

They're not allergic to water, they're allergic to chemicals on their own skin that don't get absorbed unless their skin is wet.

Common in people on a lot of medications.

Just think about the fact that yeast is, technically, a fungus… and that there are so many kind of fungi.

> I have to go somewhere and hide because I will be fully covered with bumps and bubbles on the whole body. [...] He's had to swear off bread and pizza, which can make outings in Italy a touch awkward. "It's quite hard in Naples not to eat pizza," he explains. "People would say, 'Don't you like pizza? Why are you having pasta? That's strange.'"

Love the inventive spirit but damn that's judgemental.

It was also my experience that lots of places in Italy don't understand the concept of "no dairy". We tried to look up how to say it, but it loosely translates to "no milk".

My brother told every restaurant, "No milk, please." Then they'd give him cheese.

So we learned to say, "No milk or cheese."

So they gave him pasta in a cream sauce. No milk. No cheese. Just butter.

“Non latticini”?

"sono intollerante al lattosio"

I'm 85% sure we said this exact phrase. Definitely tried out "lattosio", but no luck.

Yep, tried this. Latticini I think is the right word, but people definitely didn't understand the concept of dairy.

This reminds me of a scene in My Big Fat Greek Wedding where the aunt, when told the groom doesn't eat meat, responds with "That's okay, I'll make lamb."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFemw_6a-Tg

A friend of mine got married in NZ and told the caterers they wanted a vegetarian menu. The caterers responded with a lamb focused menu.

This was right around when My Big Fat Greek Wedding came out so it came up a lot in the subsequent jokes.

I seem to remember a different group of scientists publishing their successful use of this method to make yeast-free bread maybe 5-10 years ago. I cannot find the publication. I believe that it made the news at the time because they put a space twist on it. It stuck in my memory because I remember wanting to ask a rabbinical scholar if the product would count as unleavened bread.

> I remember wanting to ask a rabbinical scholar if the product would count as unleavened bread.

It would (almost certainly) count as leavened bread. Jewish law defines chametz (leavened bread) as a combination of one of five species of grain and water that has been left for a short period of time (usually 18 minutes) without cooking. Maybe they could get the autoclave time down low enough to make it work?

At that point you’re just trying to cheat God, and what’s the point of that if you’re so religiously devote that you follow such laws anyway?

Some elevators have sabbath mode.

People also setup timers for lights in their homes. I’ve never understood this. I’m know famous rabbis have found ways to justify this so the orthodox do this, but to me it just feels like you’re cheating the system. Or we just need to redefine what work is.

But leavened bread? It doesn’t seem as abstract to define as “work.”

As I shared in my previous comment, initially I misunderstood the purpose of that tradition as well, but as it turns out, it is less about doing work or consuming a live organism but more about preserving the heritage of the biblical struggles of erstwhile judaic tribes being forced into travel without notice (fleeing Egypt iirc), and the scarcity of more palatable sustenance.

Yes. Not eating leavened bread is something you do for Passover. Sabbath is weekly and is about “not doing work”. I thought the sabbath mode for elevator comment was just more broadly talking about “cheating God”

It's ok, I think I misunderstood your comment a little bit, but it looks like we are both on the same page here now that I go back and read. Have a good rest of your day :)

"work" is a bad translation. It should be translated as "creative activity". Creating light in this case.

Fun fact: Manhattan has a fishing line circling it for similar purposes.

https://www.npr.org/2019/05/13/721551785/a-fishing-line-enci...

I did not know about that one! As a fisherman, I wonder what happens when someone notices part of the string has broken. Surely they replace it, but does everything stop until sundown when someone can fix it, or do you call a goy?

They check the entire string every Friday and repair it if necessary. And it needs repair almost every week.

The suburb of St Ives in Sydney was allowed to do a similar thing there, after a long battle with the council and electricity companies.

St. Ives has many Jews, many from South Africa IIRC.

https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/nsw-council-approves-jew...

But that's like half the fun of being orthodox!

For many, the letter of the law, not the intent, is what counts. That’s how you end up with things like this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/KosherSwitch

(Note: speaking as a casual observer of a culture I'm not a part of.)

Rules lawyering appears to be an ingrained part of Jewish culture. You're (essentially) not allowed to leave your house during the Sabbath, so Orthodox communities lay string around entire towns, so their "house" can be considered the entirety of the town.

---

As the story goes, my father—an atheist with jewish heritage—was once on a Ski trip with his friend Steve, an orthodox Jew. During the Sabbath, Steve couldn't go skiing, so he had to stay behind in the pair's little hut. The hut had a TV, but Sabbath rules forbade Steve from turning on the TV, and Steve couldn't ask someone with jewish heritage to break Sabbath.

So instead, Steve says:

"Y'know, there's a really good game on TV today!"

Unfortunately, my father didn't get the hint.

"That's great Steve! See ya tonight!"

> A shabbos goy is a non-Jew who performs certain activities which Jewish religious law (halakha) prohibits a Jew from doing on the Sabbath.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbos_goy

“Rules lawyering” being a term from the role-playing games world, where players try to achieve their aims partly by arguing with the game master about the rules…I love the use here. I don’t know if I’ve seen it applied to the eruv, but it’s quite appropriate.

"Jewish heritage" is unclear to me, but if your father was Jewish and had turned on the TV Steve would not be permitted to watch it.

> "Jewish heritage" is unclear to me

All of his grandparents were Jewish. I don't know if my father called himself Jewish at this point in his life, but he never had a bar mitzvah, never went to temple, and neither he nor his parents believe in god. But Steve would have considered him Jewish.

> If your father was Jewish and had turned on the TV Steve would not be permitted to watch it.

Well, I guess Steve didn't know that? Steve told my father years later he was trying to get him to turn on the TV.

Keep in mind that of course I was told this story second-hand.

You're allowed to leave the house on Shabbat!

The eruv (string around the neighborhood) is to get around the prohibition on carrying things between a "public" domain and a "private" domain. This prohibition is very broad - having your house keys in your pants pocket as you leave your house counts as "carrying" as does pushing a stroller. The eruv allows the whole neighborhood to be considered a "private" area and sidesteps this prohibition.

However there are definitely Jewish communities that don't have an eruv or wouldn't make use of it if there is one in the neighborhood.

> You're allowed to leave the house on Shabbat!

> This prohibition is very broad - having your house keys in your pants pocket as you leave your house counts as "carrying"

If you can't bring your keys, you effectively can't leave, no? Or am I getting something very wrong here?

There's the idea that God (being omniscient and omnipotent) knew about any loopholes and had/has the power to close them...

Imagine hearing from God that we were too clever, and a specific loophole will be closed on Jan 1st next year

(angels singing) An Important Update To Our Terms And Conditions

Well, Rosh Hashanah rather than Jan 1, but point taken.

It's more interesting that way. These guys seem like another community of hackers: https://judaism.stackexchange.com/

Cheating God is one of my favorite things about science.

Now I'm curious, just how is science actually "cheating God"?

Of course there's a huge body of literature on the subject of God and science, including contributions by some of the most important theoretical physicists.

"Leaven bread" has a specific definition, and yeast is not included in that definition in any way. It's about time and flour.

Because yeast is often used people sometimes think that yeast is what's forbidden on Passover, but that's not correct.

I am not a biblical historian, but I do remember this bit from school: The point of eating bitter herbs and unleavened bread is not because yeast is alive or anything to do with animal vs plant or modern scientific methods (as I initially related it to not eating meat on Fridays for catholics), it is to sympathize/empathize/experience the struggles of early judaic ancestors when they were made to leave, and did not have but the scarcest resources while they traveled.

Correct but who told you it were connected to eating alive things? It is very explicit

I was referencing my earlier comment, when I was learning this years ago my assumption was that it was about not eating animals like catholics on certain fridays, because I was not familiar with the origins of the tradition until learning it in school. I suppose I could have paid more attention when we got to Ezekial.

> it was about not eating animals like catholics on certain fridays

Many of them are like animals on other days of the week too.

I don't understand what you mean by this

There was a viral social media recipe going around that used baking powder and yogurt to make decent pizza dough without yeast and without proving. Food Wishes did a version of it:

https://foodwishes.blogspot.com/2022/03/flash-pizza-too-good...

Yeast has good flavor

Came to say, I love a hint of yeasty flavor in my pizza crust. Especially if it's with beer.

I finally finished reading this on lunch and realized they note it's good for people with dietary restrictions - so nobody is coming for my yeasty dough, it's just broadening pizza's audience. Cool.

That may be, but if you are allergic to it then that's not sufficient reason to eat it. Hacks like this can help allergy sufferers.

Depending on the allergy, you might be able to add the flavor back with yeast extract (vegemite) or nutritional yeast.

> yeast extract (vegemite)

That's not how you spell Marmite.

Did you read the article? The researcher is very allergic to yeast.

they suggest that the yeast "burp" the carbon dioxide. If they consumed carbon dioxide then expelled it (like when a human drinks a soda) then it would be like a burp. Nay... they consume sugars and OUTPUT CO2. They don't burp. They fart carbon dioxide.

Very cool! I asked some bakers whether something like this would be possible a few years ago, and all of them thought it wouldn't work! (To be fair, I thought the dough would have required kneading under pressure) Awesome to see a working PoC.

As a home-cook trying to create Indian dishes, it's always intrigued me that internet recipes call for yeast to make "naan" (leavened flat bread), but road side cooks in India can make amazing naan without any yeast (yeast isn't an ingredient in authentic Indian cooking).

Is it no yeast altogether, or just naturally occurring yeast? Lactobacillus delbrueckii is probably not in any Greek or Indian cookbooks, but you can't make yogurt without it.

It would surely have natural yeast in it, but it isn't given a long time to ferment. It rises solely from the escaping steam, much as crackers and pie crust do. You have to "dock" crackers and pie crust to prevent them from bubbling up too much.

Naan is often made with yeast for flavor, but it's not necessary for the rise.

To make naan like that you need a Tandoor oven, basically a kiln. There's not really a way to replicate that kind of heat at home. The yeast is a way to get similar texture without needing the equipment.

They could have just used baking powder.

Results in a spongy, ready, thick product that doesn’t look, taste, or feel like pizza, and lacks the structure to hold everything together.

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