Category: Pastry

My mother’s mother was a wondrous cook. Or perhaps I should say she became a wondrous cook. When she and my grandfather were first married in 1928 my grandmother knew next to nothing about the subject of cookery. An attractive, bookish type, she was far more interested in the law than in roasts or pies (she had the distinction of being the first female graduate of Loyola University’s law school). Those interests were to change once my grandfather realized that her kitchen repertoire consisted of little more than light salads, vegetables and other insubstantial, womanly fare. So he sent her to cooking school.

Or not about leavening chemicals, anyway. Reader Rachel writes:

I have been trying to eat healthier, so I have been adding ground flax seeds to my morning oatmeal etc. I did a little research and learned that flax seeds can be substituted for eggs in some recipes. I have noticed that the flax seeds cause the liquid in the oatmeal to gelatinize a little. Do you have any idea how flax seeds work as an egg substitute and can they be used in anything or maybe only just recipes that need to be thickened by eggs?

Reader Jud writes:

My wife, the household baker, says why should she replace her baking powder {and soda} every six months as we’ve heard recommended on cooking shows if she is pleased with the results? My response is, to paraphrase, if the results were good with “old” baking powder, why wouldn’t you want even better results by simply using fresh baking powder? Can you tell us about what changes occur with the passage of time and how the effectiveness of the baking powder and soda is affected? It makes sense to me to spend the small amount of money to replace every six months to get the best results possible. How important is it, really?

GREAT question, reader Vanessa. A lot of people wonder why some recipes call for both. If you consider that baking powder is really baking soda (combined with some tartaric acid and corn starch) the answer becomes a little clearer: sometimes you just need more “pop.” Adding a little baking powder to a recipe that already […]

I’ve received so many emails and comments on sodium (or potassium) aluminum sulphate and its rumored relationship to Alzheimer’s that it seems a post on the subject is warranted. I tend not to like to wade into matters like these because emotions run high, but I’ll tell you what I know. Around about 1970, some […]

There have been precious few pictures this week and that’s due to one reason: the bananas I got on Wednesday were greener than green. I mean electric, neon green…that’s all the local Kroger had. So even though right now they’re undergoing accelerated ripening, stuffed in a paper bag choking on their own ethylene exhaust, they’re […]

I was planning to wind down the leavening chemistry thing at this point, but I’m getting so many questions about baking powder now that I’m thinking I need to press on. Since I’ve also received a few requests for banana bread the last several months, I think I’ll make that the project for the week. […]

Want to hear something really confusing? Both potassium bicarbonate and sodium bicarbonate were marketed under the name “saleratus” in the 1840’s. Why I have no idea, other than basic principles of branding and competitive differentiation were not well understood at the time. How else to explain why John Dwight, a baker from New York City, went to market selling his bicarbonate of soda as “Dwight’s Saleratus” in 1847?