How To Bake Without Baking Powder: Modern and Historical Alternatives for Light and Tasty Baked Goods
By Leigh Tate
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About this ebook
Covers the science and history of baking powder, enabling you to create your own leavening power through basic kitchen chemistry. Includes how to make sour milk, buttermilk, and sourdough starter, plus the author's hardwood ash baking experiments. The recipes and science behind them will be of interest to homesteaders, preppers, do-it-yourselfers, homeschoolers, living historians, and historical reenactors. Contains a glossary, a list of resources, and 54 modern and historical recipes utilizing 20 different baking powder alternatives. Also available in paperback.
Leigh Tate
Leigh Tate has always loved living close to the land. From the back-to-the-land movement to the modern homesteading movement, the agrarian lifestyle is the one she says feels like home. She and her husband currently homestead five acres in the foothills of the Southern Appalachians. Their vision is to become as self-sustaining as possible by stewarding their land, animals, and resources. Leigh's homesteading activities include gardening, food preservation, foraging, raising goats, chickens, and guinea fowl, herbs, cheese making, permaculture landscaping, spinning, weaving, knitting, sewing, quilting, natural dying, soapmaking, wood cookstove cookery, and renovating their old 1920s farmhouse.
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How To Bake Without Baking Powder - Leigh Tate
Acknowledgements
I want to thank Farmer Liz at Eight Acres and Jake at The Homestead Laboratory for their help with my ash water experiments. Their backgrounds in chemistry and interest in the project were invaluable.
I would like to thank Anna Hess at The Walden Effect for encouraging me to put this little eBook into print. A print version for your preparedness library is now available! Visit Kikobian.com for details and where to buy.
Preface
When I published 5 Acres & A Dream The Book: The Challenges of Establishing a Self-Sufficient Homestead, I described it as neither a how-to nor a why-to book. Although it contains quite a bit of practical advice about many homesteading skills, it is mostly the story of our journey toward simpler, sustainable, more self-reliant living. The Little Series of Homestead How-Tos is a complement to that book. It is a work in progress which will eventually include all of the skills mentioned in 5 Acres & A Dream The Book and Critter Tales, plus other how-tos as well. I hope they will encourage you, my readers, toward your own self-reliant lifestyles.
How This Little eBook Came to Be
My interest in the topic of baking without baking powder stems from my lifestyle goal of sustainable living and increased self-reliance. It's a satisfying feeling to do more for myself and to rely less on having to buy everything.
When my husband and I began our homesteading journey, however, we brought with us the ways we were used to doing things. We have gradually figured out that our modern culture's means and methods often don't fit into our goals as homesteaders. Because of that, we have turned more and more to traditional agrarian skills, learning how to make our own, make do, and buy less.
The Little Series of Homestead How-Tos stems from a desire to share what we're learning. This particular volume came about because I am continually exploring the limitations of our self-reliance. I find myself asking, What would I do if I couldn't buy, trade, or barter for it?
In this case, what would I do if I couldn't get baking powder?
My research into baking powder and it's alternatives has been fascinating to me. It's introduced me to the science of baking and kitchen chemistry, plus led to some fun experimentation. In sharing all that, the reading may be a bit technical at times, but I hope you find it as interesting as I do.
What is Baking Powder?
Baking powder is the primary leavening agent used in baked goods to make them rise. When all the ingredients are mixed into a batter, the baking powder plus liquid causes a chemical reaction which results in the familiar light texture we enjoy in muffins, cakes, biscuits, and other baked goods. How does it work? Baking powder contains baking soda, an alkaline substance, an acidic ingredient such as cream of tartar, and a buffer such as corn starch. When the powder combines with the liquid in the recipe, the acid and alkali react and bubble out as carbon dioxide. The buffer increases shelf life by absorbing moisture. This delays the chemical reaction which would neutralize the baking powder.
There are two kinds of baking powder: single-acting and double-acting.
Single-acting baking powders contain baking soda and one acid.
Tartrate Baking Powders contain tartaric acid (cream of tartar). Cream of tartar is fast-acting when liquid is added, so baking must follow mixing quickly.
Phosphate Baking Powders contain a phosphate such as calcium acid phosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate, or disodium pyrophosphate. These also react with liquid to create carbon dioxide but more slowly than tartrate baking powders.
SAS Baking Powders contain sodium aluminum sulfate. Its chemical reaction is triggered by heat rather than liquid, so most of the rising occurs in the oven. It is considered a slow-acting baking powder. However, it can impart a bitter taste to the final product, so small quantities are best
Kosher for Passover Baking Powder are single-acting and contain potato starch rather than corn starch.
Double-acting baking powders contain a base and two acids, usually SAS plus tartaric acid and one of the phosphates. These chemicals react at slightly different times: one when liquid is added to the batter, the other when baking temperatures are hot enough. The advantage to this is that it allows a 15 to 20 minute delay before the leavening power is dissipated from the batter. Double-acting is the most common baking powder on the consumer market today, and usually the one called for in most recipes.
Typical proportions are 1 to 1½ teaspoons of baking powder per cup of flour. A heavier batter, i.e. containing whole grain flours, seeds, nuts, raisins, chocolate chips, etc., will require more baking powder than a plain flour batter.
You can also make your own.
Homemade Baking Powder
1 part baking soda
2 parts cream of tartar
1 part corn starch or arrowroot powder
Mix thoroughly and store in an airtight container. In recipes, use the same amount of homemade baking powder as store-bought.
Keep in mind that all baking powder has a shelf life, usually said to be six to twelve months, depending on the amount of humidity to which it's exposed. You can check the potency of baking powder by adding 1 teaspoon to ⅓ cup of hot water. It should bubble vigorously. Discard the baking powder if it doesn't react when tested.
Alternatively, keep baking soda and cream of tartar on hand as individual ingredients, and add them when mixing the batter.
For each teaspoon of baking powder called for
use ½ tsp cream of tartar and ¼ tsp baking soda.
The remaining ¼ teaspoon in baking powder is starch and is not necessary for the chemical reaction. Unlike double-acting baking powder, however, this