Will Stevia lose it’s sweet properties in boiling or baking a food you use it in? Does it it need to not go above room temperature? This question is about the sweetness properties breaking down in products made from the plant leaves not a commercially processed Stevia product.
According to Wikipedia, the steviol glycosides which are the sweet tasting compounds in stevia, are “heat stable.” So I should think the answer to your question is “no.”
According to this 2010 paper, Stevioside from Stevia is stable from to 120C. Temperatures exceeding 140C forces degradation of stevioside and 200C is enough heat to completely decompose the molecule. This would suggest that it should withstand the heat from boiling and cooking - insofar - you keep the temperature below ~280F. According to this article, baking * should *cause the molecule to degrade but a cursory search on the Internet for stevia recipes provide anecdotal evidence to the contrary.
- Honesty
The question then becomes how hot does the internal temperature of the pizza sauce I’m pondering making get. I like a sweetened sauce and the pizza flavors would cover the green stuff taste in the leaves that I think ruins it for beverages. Even though the oven is 350F I don’t think the sauce internals would reach that and 350F is a bit below the 200C. I think I might try this at some point. I won’t make a big batch and I’ll skip most of the toppings just in case it fails.
Why not just add your sweetener post-cooking?