Pizza Nerdery: Diastatic Malt Powder for Color and Oven Spring

Via Adam Kuban on his Instagram handle (story)

For years, I've been poking around this thread (and the various sub-threads) on PizzaMaking.com that focus on Chicago-style thin crust (aka Tavern pizza) and in various places, posters have occasionally mentioned using diastatic malt powder - or sometimes non-diastatic - in their dough formulations.  And while I've been intrigued, I've never gone out and procured the stuff, let alone find out where I could buy it locally. 

But then, this happened over the weekend on Instagram.  Slice (RIP) Head Honcho and "pizza influencer" Adam Kuban posted this upskirt and description in his recent stories.  I screenshot it above.  (You can follow Adam here on Instagram.  Or you can learn more about his pop-up Margot's Pizza here.)

He called out that he added diastatic malt powder for oven spring and color.  Color, people?!?!  That's one of the things that I've been working on over the years is a consistent undercarriage that looks a lot like what he's holding up there.  I make my own version of tavern-cut Chicago thin that uses a modified Detroit-style approach crossed with some things that I've learned from watching how Aurelio's makes their skins (lets them dry out on top while they proof in the pan) and, of course, topped with Chellino Scamorza cheese. 

Off to find this stuff and incorporate it into my formulations to see what kind of impact it has on my pizza making.  If I can reliably produce an undercarriage that looks like the one above, while maintaining the rest of the pieces of the puzzle - which I'm quite happy with - I'll be one step closer to achieving my Chicago thin-crust touchstone pie and can move on working on another style.