[Sca-cooks] chemical leavening

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Feb 25, 2009, at 2:28 PM, Huette von Ahrens wrote:

> The fact that hartshorn was used in some medicinal recipes does not  
> mean that they were used as a leavener.
>
> Huette

And, we also need to be really, really clear, when we speak of  
hartshorn (and by "we" I mean our sources, as well), whether we're  
referring to hartshorn, the gelatin source, made from powdered horn  
and similar to isinglass (the dried sturgeon-swim-bladder gelatin  
source, which in turn is _not_ sodium silicate), and not hartshorn,  
a.k.a. baker's ammonia, salts of hartshorn, and ammonium carbonate.  
Which may or may not be made from actual horns of actual harts, among  
other sources.

Oddly enough, I just found an interesting website which essentially  
claims that the use of hartshorn salts as a leavening agent have a  
linked history to that of the development of baking powder, and that  
both are 19th century innovations based on attempts to specifically  
create chemical leaveners, whose primary advantage was considered to  
be that, unlike yeast, they don't break down and eat up to 3% of the  
flour they're leavening.

http://www.electronic-chemicals.basf.com/p02/CAPortal/en_GB/portal/abc_ammoniumcarbonat/content/Abnehmerbranchen_Anwendungen/Lebensmittel_Food/Ammoniumcarbonat/Geschichte

Or maybe some of you better try here:

http://tinyurl.com/bht9j7

Adamantius




"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter