“Hey, it’s Saturday evening, how about eating a pizza? No, not pizza, I can’t digest it!”
Surely, you have gone through this before as well; going to a pizzeria or to a friend’s house for a pizza and to regret it because of post-meal stomach pains and an unrestrainable urge to drink.
Unfortunately, in these circumstances, the pleasure of eating a good pizza cooked in an honest-to-goodness wood-fired oven may be quickly replaced by a feeling of discomfort that extends beyond the end of the meal. But why does all this happen? The answer is simple: the problem is due to poor leavening or maturation.
But what exactly are leavening and maturation?
To cook a highly digestible homemade pizza successfully, we must first shed light on the main causes of our possible mistakes. To start with, we have to say that leavening or fermentation is the chemical process of yeast converting sugar to carbon dioxide and ethanol. In the case of pizza leavening, the carbon dioxide swells the dough and the alcohol is lost during cooking. Maturation is a process by which the enzymes break molecular bonds and transform complex molecules into simpler and more digestible ones.
If the maturation time is not long enough, molecular bonds will only be partially broken and during the digestion the intestinal bacteria will produce excess gas resulting in typical abdominal bloating after eating a bad pizza. While leavening is a rapid process, maturation takes longer times depending basically on the temperature and the type of flour.
The secrets for a homemade digestible pizza
Here are our suggestions for making a homemade digestible pizza and avoiding unpleasant stomach pains:
- Don’t rush things! Making a good and digestible pizza takes time. We suggest that you have a look at the pizza dough recipe.
- Always use fresh products and go easy on the salt.
- Cook in your wood-fired or gas-fired oven making sure that its temperature is at least 350°C (660°F).
