Consider a pizza dough made by vigorously mixing to form glu

Consider a pizza dough made by vigorously mixing to form gluten and evenly disperse the ingredients such as baker\'s yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae). Predict the metabolic differences yeast would have in a thinly flattened dough and in a spherical dough ball.

Solution

While making a spherical dough, there will be mixing of oxygen and thus initially there will be aerobic metabolism of Saccharomyces cerevisiae inside the dough ball as well as on the surface of the dough. But as the oxygen inside the dough ball gets depleted, the yeast will begin anaerobic fermentation especially in the centre but the surface will continue aerobic metabolism.

On the other hand flattened dough will have higher surface area exposed to the oxygen to support the aerobic metabolism of the yeast. Thus there will be higher aerobic metabolism of yeast as compared to that in spherical dough.