Abstract: A pizza dough capable of being fermented in 30-60 minutes, allowing for the mass production of pizza dough snacks, is disclosed. The dough comprises a flour, a leavening system comprising yeast and yeast extract, and a sweetener. The combination of the ingredients, in particular the sweetener and leavening system, results in a dough and final product that displays the organoleptic properties of pizza, yet the dough only has a fermentation time of about 30-60 minutes.

Abstract: Methods of detecting a dimorphic fungus, including differentiating a dimorphic fungus from other fungi are disclosed. A sample suspected of containing a nucleic acid of a fungus, such as an internal transcribed spacer-2 (ITS2) nucleic acid sequence of a dimorphic fungal rDNA, is screened for the presence or absence of that nucleic acid. The presence of the nucleic acid indicates the sample was contacted by the fungus. Determining whether the nucleic acid sequence is present in the sample can be accomplished by detecting hybridization between a dimorphic probe, species-specific probe, and/or microbe-specific probe and a nucleic acid sequence corresponding to the ITS2 region of fungal rDNA. Kits and arrays for carrying out these methods also are disclosed.

Abstract: A sweet dough dry mix is provided which incorporates highly viscous carboxymethyl cellulose in combination with hard wheat flour. When used to make up a sweet dough, the resulting dough exhibits enhanced handling when compared with similar formulations which do not incorporate the combination. Also provided are products baked from the sweet dough. These products have noticeably enhanced height and structured evenness, and they better retard staling when compared with other doughs omitting the carboxymethyl cellulose.