Baking Powder: It’s Usage

Baking Powder is used as a leavening agent which is great for making foods like muffins, cookies and quick breads rise. The main ingredients from which baking powder is made are: Baking Soda, a Starch and an Acid. Acid is usually something like Calcium Acid Phosphate, cream of tartar, or sodium aluminium sulphate. If liquid gets mixed with baking Powder, no matter what the acid is used as an ingredient, it will react with the baking soda. This causes the carbon dioxide gas to release which in turn causes the batter or dough to rise. To keep Baking Powder away from moisture and to keep it dry, starch is added to it. It takes the form of corn starch or flour which helps keep the product dry until you’re ready to use it while baking. Another very striking advantage of baking powder is that it helps whitens teeth.

Procedure: It involves the use of Peroxides to bleach the teeth. Enamel forms the topmost layer which is semi-translucent. Dentin is the layer beneath Enamel. To whiten the dentin a peroxide layer is applied on the enamel which gradually bleaches the dentin, making it look whiter and cleaner. Depending on the intensity of the stains, the teeth become at least 4 to 5 times whiter. Baking powder differs from Baking soda in the sense that it does not require a liquid acid (such as sour milk) to react with because the acid is already in it. It therefore gives the cooks more choice of which liquid they want to use.

The following are the types of baking powders used:

1. Tartrate Baking Powder: It uses cream of tartar and tartaric acid. The dry acid in them reacts rapidly when a liquid is added. The food items or the baked goods made with such type of baking powder should be cooked quickly before the carbon dioxide has a chance to escape.
2. Phosphate Baking Powder: They are used for the dry acid. It uses calcium phosphate or disodium pyrophosphate. They react with liquid a little more slowly than tartrate.
3. SAS Baking Powder: They use sodium aluminium sulphate as the dry acid. It reacts very slowly at room temperature. It doesn’t really get going until it is heated. Most of the gas bubble production gets saved for the oven. Too much of everything is bad and hence if SAS is used in large quantities it will bring bitter taste. SAS should be used in small quantities as it enhances the baking powder that uses one of the above dry acids.
4. Single-acting Baking Powder: It involves the usage of one basic baking powder. Baking soda plus one dry acid example, carbon dioxide is immediately released when cream of tartar is made wet in the mixing bowl. One needs to get their batter or dough in the oven immediately and cooked the baked good quickly, before the bubbles have a chance to escape.
5. Double-acting Baking Powder: They are the most common and popular kind. It involves the usage of two dry acids instead of one. The first acid reacts with liquid during the mixing. The second acid is the one that is chosen because it will save its reaction when it is heated, for instance, sodium aluminium sulphate. Since, it gets two reactions, it is called "double acting". With double acting baking powder, you get a leverage of about 15-20 minutes to finish preparing your baked good batter or dough after the baking powder is added before you push that into your ovens.

Cooking Tips:

• One should never mix up doughs or batters using baking powder, hours in advance.
• A wet spoon should always be kept away from your jar of Baking Powder.
• As mentioned earlier too much of everything is bad whereas a little of everything works great. One should never presume that if a little baking powder is good, more would be great- the bitter taste of the SAS will start to come through.
• The Ratio of Baking Powder to flour is roughly 1-2 tsp of baking powder to 1 cup of flour.

Storage Hints:

Baking Powder should be kept in a cool, dry place. And once a box o9f Baking Powder is opened, it’s shelf life is of 6 months to a year.

Article Summary: Baking Powder is an essential kitchen ingredient. Baking powder is used in many recipes apart from cakes and muffins and is a miracle for whitening teeth.

Sheeba Matthew is an Indian blogger, Explorer as well as have some culinary skills which came after working with Tops India . Sheeba loves to express her culinary skills with readers to get best of it.