Make a Healthy Pizza with Whole Wheat Dough and an Optimal Baking Method

So, you love pizza, but you do not think it is a healthy choice. If it is prepared the right way, it can be a healthy pizza. Researchers have found by using wheat dough and using extended baking times and higher temperatures it makes pizza healthier.

At the University of Maryland, a team of food chemist has discovered how to boost the antioxidant content of pizza dough by optimizing baking and fermentation methods, which can lead to a healthy pizza. Longer baking times combined with high temperatures has long been known by pizza bakers to enhance the flavor of pizza. This intense baking process has been discovered to boost antioxidant levels in dough, especially whole-wheat varieties that lends to a healthier pizza.

Antioxidants help protect cells from being damaged by free radicals which are unstable molecules. Antioxidants are believed by some experts to lower the risk of heart disease and cancer. Along the lines of trying, to find ways to make food healthier researchers picked pizza to work on since it is liked by almost everyone and a healthy version of pizza would be a good choice. Therefore, they began research on trying to raise antioxidant properties in the dough

It was found that 60 percent rise in antioxidants were seen with extended baking times. An 82 percent rise in antioxidants was also seen with increased baking temperatures. This of course depends on the type of wheat flour used. The exact mechanism for the increase is still unclear. The baking times ranged from 7 to 14 minutes at temperatures between 400 to 550 degrees Fahrenheit.

This is great news for people who love deep-dish pizzas due to the longer baking time and thicker crust. Pizza dough's are often allowed to ferment before baking. Fermentation is the anaerobic conversion of sugar to carbon dioxide and alcohol by yeast. Fermentation times up to two days were observed. The findings were that the longer fermentation time in some cases doubled antioxidant levels for a healthy pizza.

Only whole wheat was used in the study. Researchers have not ruled out that the same cooking factors; longer baking time, higher temperatures, and longer fermentation may also have an antioxidant boosting effect on refined pizza dough. It is not very likely though because large amounts of the antioxidants in wheat are found in the bran and endosperm contents as they have been largely removed from refined flour.