The Hidden Hero of Homemade Pizza Dough: Diastatic Malt Powder

So you make a pretty good pizza at home. The family’s happy, your friends like coming over for your pizza parties, and everyone says things like “This pizza is better than the place down the street!” or “You should start selling this!” and while you’re appreciative of their encouragement, all you can do is smile to keep your eyes from rolling.

You know, deep down, there’s something missing. It’s just not quite there. The fermentation is inconsistent - the dough doesn’t rise as much as you’d like and you’re always flirting with underproofed or overproofed dough balls. Your oven’s temperature is maxed out, but you can’t seem to get the crust browned enough without drying out it out and burning the bottom of your pizza. The oven spring in the rim isn’t quite there and the flavor in the crust is lacking.

Lastly, it’s missing that aroma. The unmistakable waft that practically smothers you in the best way as you walk into a pizzeria. That smell isn’t just any smell, that smell is **the aroma of pizza. It’s the initial experience of a pizza as it bakes in the oven and it lingers in the air long after the pizza has been eaten.

How can all of these “deficiencies” in your pizza be addressed? More sugar for fermentation? A brand new and much hotter oven? Expensive flours from artisan flour mills? A Pizzeria scented candle? Do those exist?!

Fortunately, there is an ingredient used by professional bakers that is easily accessible to home pizza chefs - Diastatic Malt Powder.

Without any sugar or Diastatic Malt Powder to assist with fermentation, this pizza is noticeably pale around the rim. The undercarriage exhibits very minimal browning and the dough itself is somewhat bland. The crumb shows a dense and bready crust with minimal rise.

Pizza Made With 1% Sugar

The addition of sugar increased the browning of the rim somewhat with parts that were nicely browned,while other sections still appear quite pale.Compared to the first pizza, the undercarriage is much improved with wonderful browning and hints of leoparding.The flavor was somewhat better as well given the increase in fermentation activitydue to the addition of sugar. The crumb, while still being on the dense side, shows a much better rise in the rim and some unequal alveoli (gas bubbles).

Here we see a dramatic change in the pizza with the addition of Diastatic Malt Powder. The rim is uniformly brownedthroughout with only the smallest areas of paleness. The undercarriage is deeply caramelized with significant leoparding lending a deeper flavor to this pizza. The crumb is contains even alveoli showing excellent fermentation while the rim has risen beautifully, giving the pizza a lighter and better eating experience. This pizza showed wonderful signs of fermentation, color, and had a level of flavor that the previous pizzas all lacked.

For the sake of this experiment all variables remained the same to best show how Diastatic Malt Powder affects the dough. Clearly the pizza with 1% added DMP came out on top in this trial as it displayed better browning, fermentation, and rise in the oven. All of those factors make for a tastier pizza.

Manipulating the position of the steel in your oven and experimenting with using your broiler can greatly increase the positive effects of Diastatic Malt Powder, causing better and more uniform browning and baking the pizza much quicker.

Changing your flour to a high extraction flour introduces even more food for the yeast to feed on and when combined with DMP can be transformative for your pizza. See here and here for more.