Baking is one of the job requirements of being a mother. We bake birthday cakes (unless you live near a Publix which has the BEST birthday cakes), bake goodies for bake sales to raise money for preschool cubbies, and we bake chocolate chip cookies and cupcakes...just because.
Now, some moms out there are great bakers and their award-winning results boost their status as super-moms. Some moms are happy if they produce something edible and don’t burn the house down in the process. I am somewhere in the middle. I love to bake because I love sweets, but I am not too confident in the what/why/how a group of ingredients combined at high temperatures results in a delicious treat (and if successful boosts my confidence as a mom and makes me my children’s favorite person of the day).
During a recent visit with family, we found ourselves with an abundance of over-ripe bananas. In our house, over-ripe bananas = delicious banana bread. I didn’t have my recipe with me, but I had made banana bread plenty of times and thought I could make it from memory. My memory was a little fuzzy when it was time for the baking powder, so I guessed; 1/2 teaspoon felt right. The banana bread didn’t even rise as high as the pan. Normally, my banana bread looks like this:
When I returned home I checked the recipe, which calls for 3 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder. I was way off! I was never sure exactly what baking powder did, but given that my recipe-from-memory produced a banana bread 1/2 as high as the original recipe, I figured it must have something to do with making baked goods rise. I decided to find out exactly what baking powder does in the baking process.
What is baking powder and what does it do?
The purpose of baking powder is leavening, which is how our baked goods rise. It works much faster than yeast, which is also a leavening agent. Baking powder is actually a mixture of three ingredients: baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), cream of tartar (tartrate salt), and cornstarch. The baking soda (a base) and cream of tartar (an acid) react with water and heat to produce a gas, carbon dioxide. The air bubbles that form create the light and fluffy consistency we find in breads and cakes. The cornstarch is added to prevent a chemical reaction from taking place prematurely with moisture in the air.
Baking Powder vs. Baking Soda
Now it is easy to see why these two substances are so similar in name and texture. Baking powder is baking soda with two extra ingredients, making our baking experience a little easier. Whether you use baking powder or baking soda will depend on the other ingredients in the recipe. If your recipe contains acidic ingredients such as chocolate or buttermilk, it will likely call for baking soda, a base, to neutralize the taste. Since baking powder already has both an acid and a base, it is used in more neutral-tasting recipes.
Substitution
If you suddenly find yourself short on baking powder, you can use the following substitution:
1 teaspoon baking powder = 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
+ 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar + 1/4 teaspoon cornstarch
Experiment
The link below provides an experiment with a great visual of how baking powder releases carbon dioxide when mixed with vinegar.
http://www.kidsmakestuff.com/articles/show/m35q
Sources:
http://whatscookingamerica.net/Q-A/BakingPowder.htm
http://www.howstuffworks.com/baking-powder.htm
http://chemistry.about.com/cs/foodchemistry/f/blbaking.htm
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