importance in terms of taste

[canadave]

OK, folks, I was just thinking as I was making my new batch of dough.....wanted to share my thoughts, thought I'd try to get an interesting discussion going here.

The quantities of ingredients when making dough are important, of course.  But I got to wondering...which ingredients are *most* important to the taste of the product in terms of quantity?

What I mean is this: the proportion of flour to water is certainly important in making good dough.  But if the proportions are off, the dough won't necessarily TASTE much worse; it'll just have a different consistency or texture.  Maybe there'd be a slight difference in taste, but not a drastic one.

Whereas, if you took a typical NY pizza dough recipe and changed it from 1 tsp salt to 1 TBsp salt, you'd get quite a different taste.  Same for changing the quantity of sugar, oil, or yeast.

So that conclusion took me to this question: Can we rank ingredients in terms of their importance to final dough taste?

Here's mine:

1. Salt
2. Sugar
3. Yeast
4. Oil

As a separate question, forgetting quantity--which ingredients are most important, in terms of their QUALITY (assuming they're used in equal quantities to their competitors), to the final taste?  For instance, water--poor-tasting water will have a drastic effect on the final dough taste--many people claim that NYC water is essential to get "that authentic NY taste."  Some flours may taste better than others, too.  But the type of salt used doesn't usually make a huge taste difference.  Here'd be my rank for that:

1. Water
2. Oil
3. Flour
4. Yeast
5. Salt
6. Sugar

Thoughts? Comments?

[Randy]

A good question .
My order for taste;
1. salt
2. flour
3. recipe & procedure to follow( an overnight rise makes a big change in flavor.)
4. yeast
5. sugar

Quality
1. flour
2. yeast
3. recipe & procedure
4. water

[canadave]

My order for taste;
1. salt
2. flour
3. recipe & procedure to follow( an overnight rise makes a big change in flavor.)
4. yeast
5. sugar

Interesting Randy...you think that flour is heavily influential in the taste of the dough, in terms of pure quantity?  Have you ever verified that experimentally?  I've never really tested the idea, but I had always assumed that if you used a lot more flour than normal, or a lot less, you might get crummy dough in terms of texture, but the taste wouldn't be all that different unless you REALLY went overboard (like put in ten cups of flour instead of three cups).  Maybe I'm wrong though.

I guess the question is really this: let's say you have a recipe that calls for three cups of flour.  How much more flour would you have to put in before you could taste a significant difference in the final dough?

[Randy]

So that conclusion took me to this question: Can we rank ingredients in terms of their importance to final dough taste?
 

Sorry Dave, I gave my ranking based on the question, not your discusion so here is my rankingg based on the discusion using quanity for ranking.
1. salt
2. yeast
3. fat
4. sugar
5. flour

[DKM]

1. salt
2. fat
3. yeast
4. sugar
5. flour

[Pete-zza]

   1. salt
   2. by-products of fermentation (including retarded
       fermentation, sponges and sourdough starters)
   3. fat
   4. yeast
   5. sugar
   6. flour

Peter