[Sca-cooks] guess the mistake, was RE: Chocolate

[Decker, Terry D.]

In cookies, the chemical leavens don't work so much on the gluten as they
produce carbon dioxide bubbles in the soft sticky dough which expand in
baking, puffing up and lightening the cookie.  Unless you roast the flour
and coagulate the gluten, there will be a certain amount of gluten formed.

Baking soda is a simple chemical agent which will effervesce in the presence
of an acidic liquid (like milk).  The reaction is usually faster than that
of baking powder.

About 1850, sodium bicarbonate was combined with a dry acid salt (often
cream of tartar)to produce "single action" baking powder which effervesces
when combined with a liquid.

Modern baking powders are "double action" combining "single action" baking
powder and a slower acting acid which normally reacts with the sodium
bicarbonate between 120 and 140 degrees F, creating a second rise in the
oven.  The "double action" baking powder was Calumet, first marketed in
1889.  Modern baking powders have been further modified to slow down the
first reaction, so that the carbon dioxide doesn't dissipate before the
dough can be properly mixed, shaped, and placed in the oven.

Ammonium carbonate or ammonium bicarbonate (hartshorn) works faster than
baking soda.  It gives a tremendously fast expansion producing very light,
crisp cookies.  It is used primarily in small bake goods, which allows the
ammonia to dissipate during baking.

Unlike bread, cookies lose a lot of moisture in baking.  Denser cookies lose
less than lighter cookies.  So, baking powder cookies should be softer and
moister, while baking soda and ammonium carbonate cookies should be lighter
and crisper.

Hmm, maybe I should make some white chocolate Toll House this evening.

Bear



> Corriher's volume Cookwise gives 2 recipes
> for chocolate chip cookies that call for
> baking powder and not baking soda. I am
> under the impression that the original
> 1930's recipe has changed through the ages,
> but I can't lay my hands on the various volume(s)
> at the moment that detail this. I do know that
> originally the cookie came before the
> manufacture of the chocolate chip and that one
> broke up or chipped by hand block or bar chocolate
> for the cookies. Then they made the bags of chips.
>
> Johnna Holloway  Johnnae
>
>
>
> > >Yeah, Master A, all the CCC recipes I've run across use
> some sort of
> > >chemical leavening (usually baking soda, IIRC).
> > >--Maire, who now wants hot cookies for breakfast instead of nice,
> > >healthy, low-fat shredded wheat....*sigh*.....
> > Philip & Susan Troy wrote:
> > I agree, most of the recipes I've seen call for baking soda. But I
> > was asking about baking powder, which I would expect to find more in
> > cakes than in cookies.>
> > Adamantius