Why Using Too Little Yeast in the Dough is Never Good for your Homemade Pizza

We must dispel a myth regarding yeast: using too little is not good for the dough. In reality we have to talk about the adverbs used: "little" and "very" are not words that make sense in the creation of a pizza. The only word you need to use is "right". The right amount of yeast or water or flour based on the product you want to eat, or sell if you're a pizza chef. So let's see where this false belief comes from and how to proceed to have a dough made to perfection.

Neither Much nor Little: the Truth is Always in the Middle

Is pizza with little yeast more digestible? The digestibility of a dough depends on many factors but yeast almost never has anything to do with it. We have demonized it for too long but, contrary to what is said, yeast helps to create all that bouquet of aromas that we appreciate in pizzas, it is the true engine of the magic of leavening, it is the soul of the dough.

The story behind using little yeast in the dough comes from the old pizza makers. However, they had a very specific reason for doing so, and even today it may make sense to use "reduced" quantities of yeast in pizza dough. We're still talking about the same thing though: they used less in proportion to how much we use at home, but in reality they used the "right amount" of product. Why did they do it? Because this group of mushrooms is short-lived, therefore a dough with a lot of yeast risks "decaying" sooner than necessary. Using a little helps you standardize the product and facilitates processing times. To put it plainly: it's more comfortable.

Using too little yeast to make homemade dough is useless, because it makes the pizza less tasty and, above all, this choice makes life difficult for us. We are not saying that using too little yeast is bad, we are instead saying that it depends on the type of product we want to cook. There is no magic formula that allows us to perfectly calculate this quantity. Even if you search online you will always find different recipes. In general we can do it this way:

• for a dough that requires 24 hours of leavening at room temperature, a couple of grams per kilo of flour is enough;
• if instead we want something more elaborate, always within 24 hours but giving the dough time to mature in the refrigerator, more yeast will be needed: even 10 grams per kilo is fine because the metabolism of the yeasts is slowed down by the low temperatures, so using little yeast for this type of dough could lead to non-existent leavening and a very "heavy" pizza.