Who doesn’t love everything about freshly baked bread? From the mouth watering smell to the warm, soft fluffy dough, there’s really nothing you can complain about. But let’s admit it, at least once while baking bread we’ve all wondered what baking powder does and why we need this strange white substance.
Not much to my surprise, with a little bit of research we can figure out that baking powder is really just chemistry at it’s finest! Baking powder is used to make the dough rise, and without it, we would not have the fluffy consistency everybody knows and loves!
Baking powder is a mixture of baking soda(Sodium Bicarbonate) and a dry acid(for example; sodium aluminum sulfate, cream of tartar). When liquid is added, these ingredients react to form bubbles of carbon dioxide gas-- which makes the dough rise!(How Baking Powder Works, Helminstine)
The balanced chemical reaction between the sodium bicarbonate(NaHCO3) and the cream of tartar(KHC4H4O6 ) is:
NaHCO3 + KHC4H4O6 → KNaC4H4O6 + H2O + CO2
(How Baking Powder Works, Helminstine)
Similarly for sodium bicarbonate and aluminum sulfate(NaAl(SO4)22):
3 NaHCO3 + NaAl(SO4)2 → Al(OH)3 + 2 Na2SO4 + 3 CO2
(How Baking Powder Works, Helminstine)
With power-- or should I say powder comes responsibility. If you add too much it can cause the bread/cake to taste bitter. It can also cause the dough to rise too quickly and collapse due to the air bubbles in the batter growing too large. But too little can result in a tough cake with poor volume and compact crumb.( Baking Powder and Baking Soda, Jaworski)\
QOTD: Yeast is also used to rise dough! Although they can be used for the same reasons, there are some large differences in between the two and at some instances they cannot be used interchangeably! Any thoughts on the comparison?
Thank you, please comment and if you would like to see the bibliography it will be updated on the Resources post!