The amazing scientifically optimized pizza

Pizza is arguably the perfect food. It can be adapted to all tastes, contains the whole array of food groups, is visually apetizing, simple to eat and… well simply delicious. Born in the 18th century poor houses of Naples when they decided to add some of those cheap and overlooked tomatoes to their flat bread, the pizza was complete when their countrymen added for flavour oil, anchovies, basil or mozarella.
The later can be seen as one of the finest addition. Coincidence or culinary genius of the enlightened Italy, mozarella is the perfect physico-chemical companion to pizza. Cheese in essence a gel made of two intermingled phases : the solid curds and the liquid whey – a eutectic mixture. At room tempreature, the mix is stable, but heat it up and eventually the two phases will separate and never form back a gel even if cooled. The eutectic characteristics of mozarella allow it to melt across just the right range of temperature without burning, nor causing its separation in its two constituants.
If the cheese is the crown of the pizza, its foundation and secret weapon is its crust. Not only must it be soft, light and hearthy, the stylish crust has to be shaped in the air with the famed italian’s chef toss. The trick makes the gourmand Napolitans drool and the mechanical engineers of Monash University think. They observed that the tossing of the pizza dough mimic the motion of their ultrasonic motor. In the hope of optimizing it, they studied the tour de main of italian bakers while shaping the perfect pizza. They observed that the first toss has to be helical to maximize the energy transmitted by friction. However, to keep the pizza rotating at its maximal speed, the subsequent tosses should follow a tilted ellipse.
As a final note, if, minding your health and not your taste buds, you suffer from pizza guilt, researchers have also had a tought for you. Whole wheat crust sounds good to you? Many studies link the benefits of whole wheat with a highest antioxidant potential. Investigating the influence of the baking process on it, researchers observed that the longest you allow the dough to ferment and the slower you cook it, the higher the antioxidant potential of the crust will be.

For further reading
Liu KC et al., (2009) Europhys. Let., 85, 6000, 1-5
Moore J. et al. (2009) J. Agric. Food Chem., 57(3), 832-9
Cobb C. & Fetterolf ML, The Joy of Chemistry, Prometheus books, New York, 2005, ch. 14