Textural characteristics and color analyses of 3D printed gluten-free pizza dough and crust

A new methodology was developed to print pizza dough with a gluten free flour blend or commercial gluten whole wheat flour using extrusion-based 3-D printing technology. Their physical properties were compared to commercially available pizza dough and crust. The optimized nozzle size, print speed, ingredient flow speed, and line thickness for the 3-D printing of pizza dough were: 0.04 cm, 800 cm/minutes, 1.8, and 0.34 cm, respectively. The printed gluten-free pizza dough required 120 min of fermentation to obtain a comparable color and textural profile (P < 0.05) to that of the gluten whole wheat flour dough fermented for 60 min. The 3-D printed gluten free, whole-wheat pizza and commercially available wheat flour dough and standard crusts demonstrated identical $$ values of 0.14 and 0.13, respectively with brownness index (BI) values of 1.47 and 1.62, respectively. Textural profile analysis (TPA) of 3-D printed gluten free and whole wheat pizza dough, crust and the commercial standard wheat flour pizza dough and crust demonstrated significant (P < 0.05) correlations in terms of hardness, fracturability, adhesiveness, springiness, cohesiveness, chewiness, and resilience. An optimized method was developed to prepare gluten-free pizza dough and crust with similar functional properties to that of gluten whole wheat flour dough and crust.