[Sca-cooks] Leavening

[ranvaig at columbus.rr.com]

This is a gem from another list, which I thought 
this group would enjoy.  It came in the middle of 
a thread about using urine for cleaning.  "In the 
old days" does not necessarily mean in period, of 
course.

Ranvaig

https://listserv.heanet.ie/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0509&L=old-irish-l&T=0&F=&S=&P=11488

>I spent 3 months in the Galway Gaeltacht in the 1950s and had access to a
>very old woman who delighted in teaching/scandalizing the young 'Dub'.
>Among other things she told me that 'in the old days' human urine was
>collected, allowed to go stale in a loosely covered vessel and then "nuair a
>bhí an boladh méith" (when the odor had ripened) the liquid was used in
>bread making.  She hastened to point out that the advent of baking soda put
>an end to this use of stale urine.  (Heating, as in baking, of ammonium
>bicarbonate releases both ammonia and carbon dioxide, both of which would
>help to leaven the dough.  They would also largely escape during the
>baking.)  Some years ago I tested the efficacy of ammonium bicarbonate in
>place of sodium bicarbonate in making both white and wholemeal bread.  It
>worked, but some (not all) tasters thought the taste was 'a bit different',
>not bad, just different.