i just read the criteria sheet. im supposed to put my results on here..
so ill do it now. basically i put all the pizzas in the oven at the same time. they were all 20cm in diameter and 1cm deep. i proceeded to check the size of each pizza every ten minutes before taking them out of the oven and recording the cooking time.

the results were as follows:



yep... do i put graphs up here too? ugh. ill do it later.

i completed my experiment today. it took a really long time and i ran out of flour. it was very difficult to do so many pizzas at the same time and i found it very frustrating. my parents weren't happy with the amount of mess i made.

on the bright side, i have found some results. on the down side, i dont really know what i can infer from these results. hopefully ill be able to figure something out. srp sucks. that is all :)

ingredients

i bought my ingredients today... im going to do my experiment on the weekend.

Risk Assessment

there arent really many risks in my experiment so im not really sure whether or not i need to do a proper risk assessment but ive done one anyway:

Risk: Oven- if left too long could overheat and cause fire
Control: Do not leave oven unattended, check that oven is safely turned off after use.
Risk: oven is hot and could burn
Control: be careful when placing pizzas in oven and removing them. do not touch any hot surfaces and use oven mits to remove trays.

and i think thats all...

-annabelle x

Method

Hypothesis:
The rising height and cooking time of a pizza are variables that are impacted by the amount of yeast present in the base and will not be impacted when other ingredient quantities are changed.

Aim:
To prove that ingredient quantities of a pizza base, apart from the yeast, can be changed without impacting the rising height and cooking time of the pizza.

Method:
(a) Equipment:
5 medium glass bowls (labelled with: basic, yeast free, extra water, extra oil and self-raising flour)
measuring cups
measuring spoons
5 wooden spoons
Ruler
Oven (preheated to 180 degrees celcius)
Ingredients (as posted in previous blog)
Metal trays to hold pizza in oven

(b) Method:
1. collect all equipment and ingredients
2. preheat oven to 180°C
3. measure out ingredients for the basic recipe seperately as per quantities in the previous post
4. using wooden spoon, combine ingredients in the glass bowl until ingredients have become a dough- like mixture.
5. remove dough from bowl and knead until the dough is almost smooth
6. roll dough out flat and cut into a circle with a diameter of 20cm and height of 1 cm.
7. place left over dough back in glass bowl.
8. repeat steps 3-7 for the yeast free base, extra water base, extra oil base and self-raising flour base.
9. spread 2 T of tomato paste on each base.
10. sprinkle 1/2 cup of grated cheese on each base.
11. place mini pizzas in oven and cook, measuring and recording the height every 10 minutes.
12. remove pizzas from oven as they finish cooking, recording the cooking time as they are removed.
13. record all results in a table.
14. repeat the experiment with left over dough.

and thats it :)

-annabelle x

Climate Graph

okay, so heres the climate graph. what i did was put all the information into an excel table and made two seperate graphs. i then proceeded to copy these two graphs into paint and fiddle around a bit until they become one. i hope this is similar to what its supposed to look like... :)

holidays

hi there. its been like two weeks since my last post, and i have hardly thought about SRP at all. but i thought about it today, and realised that i need to be posting "regularly". im not posting regularly, but im posting every now and then so hopefully that counts for something... :S

anyway, like i said its holidays and ive been busy doing fun things and not thinking about school which has resulted in no SRP progress. as i said in my last post though, im not really sure what else im supposed to be progressing on... ive done my pre-experiment research and i will work on my method in the near future. once ive finished procrastinating that is.. am i supposed to put ALL of my research on here? because i havent... not that theres really that much.

this was probably a waste of your time to read, since i havent made any progress at all. sorry about that... whilst writing this though i have been thinking about what im going to do for my method and that has to count for something right?

ive decided to go with your idea of making quite small pizzas so that all of them can be cooked at the same time. they will in fact be round pizzas, and will all be the same diameter. i will make sure of this by skillfully measuring with a ruler :) at the moment i am unsure of what that diameter will be, but i will figure it out. it might change when i do my experiment anyway depending on whether i can fit each base into the oven. theres three oven trays though, so im fairly sure they will all fit..

mhmm, well thats it. im going to laser tag :D

-annabelle x

progress

okay so its been a while since my last post.. sorry about that. the holidays just started and i havent really been thinking about my SRP at all. i think you probably expected that from me but hey, at least im honest right? :P

im kind of thinking that im not really sure whether or not my srp is like complex enough. like i feel like all i have to do now is the actual experiment but i know youre expecting more then that in the final report. so ive just kind of been thinking about what i should be researching and stuff like that as pre- experiment knowledge but im pretty sure i kind of covered that in my last post.

so anyway, the plan is that i will work on the method etc before my next blog update and then i'll be ready to do the experiment. i will just be cooking my pizzas in my own kitchen, using my own oven and appliances. the ingredients will all be kindly supplied by my parents and will not cost much as we already have them sitting in the pantry. so its pretty much all ready to go, apart from the slight issue of not having a method. BUT I AM WORKING ON THAT!

at the moment, my proposed hypothesis is:

the rising height and cooking time of a pizza are variables that are impacted by the amount of yeast present in the base and will not be impacted when other ingredient quantities are changed.

the aim of the experiment is:

to prove that ingredient quantities of a pizza base, apart from the yeast, can be changed without impacting the rising height and cooking time of the pizza.

so far thats where im at, but ill keep you updated.

-annabelle x

YEAST

Yeast is a very influential ingredient in a pizza base, as i found out this week. (that's a lie, i already knew that. BUT this week was the week i actually looked into it properly) wikipedia kindly informed me that:

"Yeast, most commonly Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is used in baking as a leavening agent, where it converts the fermentable sugars present in dough into the gas carbon dioxide. This causes the dough to expand or rise as gas forms pockets or bubbles. When the dough is baked the yeast dies and the air pockets "set", giving the baked product a soft and spongy texture."

Put in simple terms, yeast is basically the ingredient in the base that causes the mixture to rise. It is also stated that the yeast gives the dough a soft and spongy texture. by using this information, i am able to hypothesise that the pizza base without yeast in the mixture will not rise as much as the ones in which yeast is an ingredient, and may infact not rise at all. also from this information, it could be hypothesised that the texture of the yeast free base will be very different to that of the bases with yeast. based on this research, i am thinking that maybe taking the yeast out completely is not such a great idea because the dough will be more like pastry then any dough... but ive decided to do it anyway just to test out how much difference there is.

after researching the other ingredients, i have come to the conclusion that i dont think any of them will really impact either the rising height or cooking time but i will test these recipes anyway just to prove it.

so thats all for today i think.

-annabelle x

Research

So, since my experiment is about how the ingredients of the pizza base impact the time and height of the pizza, i decided that it would probably be a good idea to find out what it is in the ingredients that actually affects these things. that way, i will be able to write an accurate aim and hypothesis and also possibly know what to expect.

what i plan on researching is the properties of each ingredient and whether or not they impact either of the things i am trying to test. the ingredients are flour, yeast, salt, water and olive oil. it is a very basic recipe and so there are not many variations to be made. i was thinking that i could try using different brands of yeast maybe, (not sure whether that would make much difference or not) and possibly swapping plain flour for wholemeal flour in one of the recipes.

so anyway, my research is what i will be working on over the next week or so, but this week is going to be busy as i have several assessments and the school dance. I WILL MAKE TIME THOUGH. and i will update you soonish, when i've figured some things out :) :)

Developed Ideas- kind of

okay, so i'm pretty sure i'm going to go with the pizza idea. this blog is the one thats due that i will put all of my information in and hopefully cover all angles of the criteria.

so my plan is to make 5 pizzas, all with similar recipes but different quantities of ingredients in each. i will cook each of these pizzas in the same oven with the same preheating time and temperature to control the temperature variable.

i will also keep the measurements of topping ingredients (cheese and tomato sauce) the same as well as the width and thickness of the base before cooking. these two things will ensure that the only thing that is changing in the pizzas is the ingredients of the base.

yeast is the ingredient in a pizza base that makes the base rise, but i am interested to see whether the base will rise without yeast in it or not. also, which ingredients speed up cooking time for example, more water could slow it down due to a wet mixture.

i will make the first pizza with a basic recipe of:

3 cups plain flour
2 tsp dried yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
300mL warm water
1 tbs olive oil

i will then make a yeast free pizza made of:

3 cups plain flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
300mL warm water
1 tbs olive oil

the third pizza will be made with more water:

3 cups plain flour
2 tsp dry yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
350mL warm water
1 tbs olive oil

the fourth pizza will have extra olive oil:

3 cups plain flour
2 tsp dry yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
300mL warm water
3 tbs olive oil

and finally, the fifth pizza will have self raising flour instead of plain:

3 cups SR flour
2 tsp dry yeast
1 1/2 tsp salt
300mL warm water
1 tbs olive oil

this is just ideas for contents of the pizzas and may change as i research into it more. it is difficult to find out whether or not properties of the ingredients will affect the cooking time or not, but i will continue to do research.

I'm thinking that i will make relatively small pizzas, probably with a diameter of 20cm and a base depth of 1 1/2 cm. these sizes may change depending on how much dough there is though but will stay the same for every pizza.

the independant variables in my experiment are ingredients, size and temperature, and the dependant variables are cooking time and rising height.

Thats all for now, I'll keep you updated on further developments.

- annabelle x

IM BACK :)

Alright, so my internet has been stuffing up all week and it's been very difficult to get it working. Then, when it is working it is extremely slow and tedius to work on which is why I'm writing my blogs in a word document and then I'll post them all when it starts working again. I don't know if that's allowed, but I'm hoping it's okay? As long as I have posted something by the due date right?

Anyway, back to what you actually (maybe) want to read: my SRP assignment progress. So i have been thinking a lot (yes, that may be a tiny exaggeration, but i HAVE been thinking a bit) about what i want to do for my SRP and have come up with the idea that i could investigate how the ingredients in the pizza base impact the cooking time and rising height.

That would mean that I would control the variable ingredients of the topping (cheese and tomato sauce) by keeping them the same on each pizza and only change the ingredients of the base. more research will have to be done as to which ingredients will influence time and height though and which ingredients can be changed without wrecking the quality of the pizzas.

I'm trying not to include taste as one of the aspects of my experiment though, as that is based on opinion and i don't want subjective results. Also, by incorporating taste, I will need to do a lot more work due to having to organise permission slips etc. and I'm not sure whether or not the extra work is necessary.

That's all for now i think,

-Annabelle x

FIRST OFFICIAL BLOG.

Kind of, not really but anyway. I decided that my Hello World blog doesn't really count since it has nothing to do with my actual SRP so technically it is my first blog. ANYWAY, back on track.



So I haven't had many ideas for my SRP but i have had one which will hopefully work if i can carry it out correctly. Since I'm interested in cooking, and my favourite food is cheese pizza, i thought i would do my SRP about cooking cheese pizza.



Due to the many ingredients that would be used in cooking pizza though, there would be a lot of variables. This could be hard to control and would definitely be something i would have to consider in detail before beginning my experiment. I will put more research into what i want to do and update soon.



Love Annabelle x

HELLO WORLD.