by Jeff Potter
Depending upon the amount of bicarbonate you started with, after you add the spoonful of vinegar the glass will be in one of three states (none of which involve being half-full or half-empty): bicarbonate ions still available but no acetic acid ions available, no bicarbonate ions available but acetic acid ions still available, or neither bicarbonate nor acetic acid ions freely available. In baking, it’s this last state—a neutral balance—that we want to reach. Too much baking soda, and it won’t all react with the acids in the food and will leave the food with a soapy, yucky taste. Not enough baking soda, and the food will remain slightly acidic (which is okay) and not have as much lift as possible (which is probably not okay—your food will be flat). To repeat one of my favorite quotes: "Dosage matters!"
The reaction between baking soda and an acid is the key to understanding when you should use baking soda versus baking powder. This balancing act between acids and baking soda isn’t a problem with baking powder, of course. This is because the baking powder is already balanced for you—the ratio of acids to bicarbonate is preset by the manufacturer.
If your ingredients aren’t very acidic, baking soda won’t have much to react with, so use baking powder. On the other hand, if your ingredients are extremely acidic, using baking soda will work, since there will be enough hydronium ions to react with. How much baking soda to use depends on the pH of the ingredients in your dish. Short of testing or calculating the pH, experimentation is the easiest way: take a guess and keep notes. Keep adding baking soda until the additional baking soda no longer helps with lift (or can be tasted). If you’re still not getting enough lift at this point, switch to adding baking powder.
Note
Baking soda doesn’t need an acid to decompose; heat will do it, too. Try melting some sugar, just as though you were making caramel (see Caramel Sauce in Chapter 4), and instead of adding cream, add a small spoonful of baking soda and stir. The baking soda will break down and cause the sugar to bubble up.
The pH of common ingredients.
Buttermilk Pancakes
Given time, yeast and bacteria generate flavors that we often find pleasant. But what about those times when you’re craving that taste right now—or at least, sometime this morning? You can take a shortcut by using buttermilk, which has already been munched on by bacteria.
Whisk together to combine thoroughly:
2 cups (240g) bread flour
5 tablespoons (60g) sugar
1 ½ teaspoons (7g) baking soda
1 teaspoon (5g) salt
In a separate bowl, melt:
½ cup (115g) melted butter
In the same bowl as the butter, add and whisk together:
2 ½ cups (610g) buttermilk (lukewarm!)
2 large (120g) eggs
Mix the wet ingredients into the dry, stirring with a whisk or spoon to combine. Cook on a griddle or nonstick frying pan set over medium heat (if you have an IR thermometer, 325–350°F / 160–175°C) until golden brown, about two minutes per side.
Notes
You don’t need to butter the griddle or pan before cooking these—there is enough butter in the batter that the pancakes are self-lubricating—but if you do feel the need, wipe any excess butter out of the pan before cooking the pancakes. If you have any dots of oil on the surface, they’ll interfere with the Maillard browning reactions.
Pull the buttermilk and eggs out of the fridge an hour or so before you’re ready to use them, to allow them to come up to room temperature. If you’re in a rush, you can double-duty a microwave-safe mixing bowl: melt the butter in it, add the buttermilk, then nuke it for 30 seconds to raise the temperature of the buttermilk.
Note
Try using this batter for buttermilk fried chicken. Slice cooked chicken into bite-sized pieces, dredge them in cornstarch, dip them in this batter, and then deep-fry them in vegetable oil at 375°F / 190°C. The starch will help the batter adhere to the chicken. (No cornstarch? Use flour.) For the ideal texture, cook the chicken sous vide, as described in Sous Vide Cooking of Chapter 7.
Gingerbread Cookies
Chemical leaveners aren’t always used to create light, fluffy foods. Even dense items need some air to keep them enjoyable.
In a bowl, mix together with a wooden spoon or electric beater:
½ cup (100g) sugar
6 tablespoons (80g) butter, softened but not melted
½ cup (170g) molasses
1 tablespoon (17g) minced ginger (or ginger paste)
In a separate bowl, whisk together:
3¼ cups (400g) flour
4 teaspoons (12g) ginger powder
1 teaspoon (5g) baking soda
2 teaspoons (3g) cinnamon
1 teaspoon (1g) allspice
½ teaspoon (2g) salt
½ teaspoon (2g) ground black pepper
Sift the dry ingredients into the bowl with the sugar/butter mixture. (I use a strainer as a sifter.) Work the dry and wet ingredients together using a spoon or, if you don’t mind, your hands. The dough will get to a crumbly, sand-like texture. Add ½ cup (120g) water and continue mixing until the dough forms a ball.
Turn out the dough onto a cutting board coated with a few tablespoons of flour. Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough until it is about ¼″ (0.6 cm) thick. Cut it into shapes using a cookie cutter or a paring knife and bake them on a cookie sheet in an oven set to 400°F / 200°C until cooked, about eight minutes. The cookies should be slightly puffed up and dry, but not overly dry.
Baking gingerbread cookies is, of course, a great holiday activity with kids.
Gingerbread Cookie Frosting
In a microwave-safe bowl, mix together with a fork or electric beaters:
3 tablespoons (40g) butter, softened but not melted
1 cup (200g) powdered sugar
1 tablespoon (15g) milk
1 teaspoon (4g) vanilla extract
Add food coloring if desired. Microwave the frosting for 15 to 30 seconds—long enough to melt the frosting, but not so long that it boils. This will give you a frosting that you can then quickly dip the cookies into and that will set into a nice, thin coating that adheres well to the cookies.
One-Bowl Chocolate Cake
I have a thing against cake mixes. Sure, commercial mixes produce very consistent results—they use food additives and stabilizers exactly calibrated for the other ingredients in the cake mix—but even for a quick birthday cake, you can make a truly homemade one that actually tastes like chocolate without much more work.
Note
Cakes are commonly made using a two-stage method, in which dry ingredients are weighed out and whisked in one bowl, wet ingredients are whisked in a second bowl, and then the two are combined. In the streamline method, all ingredients are mixed in the same bowl: first dry (to make sure the baking powder is thoroughly blended), then wet, then eggs.
In a large bowl or the large bowl of a mixer, measure out:
2 ¼ cups (450g) sugar
2 cups (240g) pastry or cake flour (all-purpose flour is okay, too)
¾ cup (70g) cocoa powder (unsweetened)
2 teaspoons (10g) baking soda
½ teaspoon (2g) salt
Whisk together the dry ingredients, then add to the same bowl and whisk to combine thoroughly (about a minute):
1 ½ cups (360g) buttermilk
1 cup (218g) canola oil
1 teaspoon (5g) vanilla extract
Add eggs and whisk to combine:
3 large (180g) eggs
Prepare two 9″ / 22 cm or three 8″ / 20 cm round cake pans by lining the bottom with parchment paper. Yes, you really need to do this; otherwise, the cakes will stick and tear when you try to remove them. Spray the paper and pan sides with nonstick spray or coat with butter, and then dust with either flour or cocoa powder.
Note
The parchment paper doesn’t need to cover every last square millimeter of the bottom of the cake pan. Cut a square of parchment paper, and fold it in half, then in quarters, and th
en in eighths. Snip the top off the folded paper, unfold your octagon, and place it in the pan.
Divide the batter into the cake pans. Try using a scale to keep the weights of the pans the same; this way the cakes will all be roughly the same height.
Bake in an oven preheated to 350°F / 175°C until a toothpick comes out clean, about 30 minutes. Allow to cool before turning out and frosting. If your cakes sink in the middle, your oven is probably too cold. Check that it is calibrated correctly; see Approaching the Kitchen in Chapter 2 for details.
Note
Even professional bakers use toothpicks to check doneness. For brownies, check that a toothpick inserted 1″ / 2.5 cm deep comes out clean; for cakes, push the toothpick in all the way.
Notes
When placing the cake pans in the oven, put them on a wire rack in the middle of the oven. If you keep a pizza or baking stone in your oven (which is recommended), don’t set the cakes directly on the stone; put them on a rack above the stone.
Like buttermilk, baking cocoa powder is acidic! Dutch process cocoa powder, however, is alkalinized—that is, it has had its pH level adjusted, changing it from a pH of around 5.5 to a pH between 6.0 and 8.0, depending upon the manufacturer. Don’t just blindly substitute Dutch process cocoa powder for straight-up cocoa powder; some of the baking soda will need to be switched out for baking powder.
You can sometimes make a buttermilk substitute by adding 1 tablespoon (15g) of vinegar or lemon juice to 1 cup (240g) of milk. This will adjust the pH to be roughly the same as that of a cup of buttermilk, but it will not create the same texture or thickness, so don’t use that substitute for this recipe. If you don’t have buttermilk, use regular milk and substitute baking powder for half of the baking soda.
Note the baking temperature of 350°F / 175°C—as discussed in 356°F / 180°C: Sugar Begins to Caramelize Visibly of Chapter 4, sugar doesn’t begin to noticeably brown until above this temperature. You can tell a lot about what kind of baked good you’ll end up with just by looking at the baking temperature.
Simple Chocolate Ganache Frosting
In a saucepan over medium heat, heat 1 cup (240g) of heavy cream until it just begins to boil. Remove from heat and add 2 tablespoons (30g) of butter and 11½ oz (325g) of finely chopped bittersweet chocolate. (You can use semi-sweet chocolate if you prefer your cakes on the sweeter side. Most chocolate chips are semi-sweet; try using those.) Allow to rest until the chocolate and butter have melted, about five minutes. Add a pinch of salt and whisk to thoroughly combine.
To frost the cake, you can just pour the still-warm ganache over the top, allowing it to run down the sides. (This can get messy—which can serve as an excuse for eating half the ganache while frosting.) Or, to create a more traditional frosting, allow the ganache to set in the fridge, about 30 minutes, and then use an electric beater or mixer to beat it until it’s light and fluffy. Coat the top of each layer of the cake with the whipped ganache and stack them, leaving the sides exposed.
Notes
Try spiking the frosting with a tablespoon of espresso or liquor such as rum, port, or Grand Marnier. For a tangier frosting, substitute buttermilk for half of the heavy cream. If you really want to push the boundaries, trying using anything you think would work in a truffle. Cinnamon is easy to imagine, but why not cayenne pepper or lavender? Or infuse the cream with Earl Grey tea.
Make sure your cake is cool before frosting; otherwise, the heat will melt the ganache.
Meg Hourihan’s Mean Chocolate Chip Cookies
Meg Hourihan co-founded the company that created Blogger.com, one of the Internet’s first blogging platforms.
PHOTO USED BY PERMISSION OF MEGHAN HOURIHAN
Tell me about yourself and what you do with food.
I started cooking, mostly baking, making very elaborate cakes, when I was eight or nine. I always liked cooking and technology, and went back and forth for a while. I had been working on the Web and doing the startup thing for a long time. I got burned out and decided to take some time off of the Internet, so I got a job working at a restaurant in a kitchen. It was a nice change of pace.
What similarities and differences between developing software and working in the restaurant did you find?
The kitchen has a very specific life cycle, just like a software project does, but it’s incredibly compressed. Every morning you come in and do your prep work, almost like your requirements phase. You figure out what you’re going to need to make it through the dinner service. You then get in the moment of cooking and then after the last order has gone out you break down your kitchen and clean up your station. The whole life cycle comes to an end and you have a chance to say, "What did we do well? What can we improve on?" You get to learn from your mistakes, and the next day the whole process starts again. It reminds me of web-based stuff: once your product has launched, you can push an update every single day and respond to customer feedback rather than a packaged software cycle where you’re disconnected from end users. When you’re working in a restaurant, your end users will tell you in five minutes if that dish is no good and it’s going to come right back to the kitchen. You find out pretty quickly if you’re doing it right and who you’re doing it for because they’re right on the other side of the wall.
Have there been any real surprises in the learning process of becoming a better cook?
It’s one of those things that takes a lot of work. I’m lucky that I like doing it and have been doing it so long; I have this knowledge base to fall back on. My husband was making a soup the other day. The recipe said to cook the vegetables on medium heat for 45 minutes. He sent me a text message: "We’re not having the soup tonight, the vegetables are burned to a crisp." I looked in the pot when I got home. The vegetables were just carbonized. I said, "Oh my god, you can’t cook these tiny little vegetables for 45 minutes on medium heat. This is exactly what’s going to happen!" He was so mad. He said, "But this is what the instructions told me. I was following the recipe!" If I had been making it, I would have known that that couldn’t possibly be right; I have enough experience. If you don’t have the confidence, the recipe becomes your crutch and you forget to back up and rely on common sense.
Is there a dish that you are particularly fond of?
When I was doing my blog I had asked people for chocolate chip cookie recipes. I was tired of the one I was using and I said, "If you send me your recipe, I’ll cook it to discover the best chocolate chip cookie recipe." I probably got 30 or 40 different recipes and I realized, "Holy cow! There’s no way I’m going to be able to make and evaluate all these cookie recipes in any reasonable amount of time." In talking with my husband, we decided that we were going to average all of the recipes and then make that cookie, whatever the result was. The recipe is crazy. Heat the oven to 354.17°F / 178.98°C. Use 1⅓ eggs. It’s all these impossible measurements because I just averaged across all the ingredients. You think this is going to be a really gross cookie because you just cobbled together all of these things and you can’t possibly average together 40 cookie recipes or whatever it was, but it turned out pretty good.
A Mean Chocolate Chip Cookie
Preheat oven to 354.17°F / 178.98°C, or as close as you can get.
In a medium bowl, sift or thoroughly whisk together:
2.04 cups (245g) flour
0.79 teaspoons (3.81g) salt
0.79 teaspoons (3.63g) baking soda
Set dry ingredients aside.
In another bowl, using a hand or stand mixer, cream until incorporated and smooth:
6.44 tablespoons (87.9g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
2.1896 tablespoons (29.9g) unsalted butter, cold
4.2504 tablespoons (58g) unsalted butter, melted
0.84 cups (169g) light brown sugar
0.10 cups (20g) dark brown sugar
0.54 cups (109g) white sugar
Add and mix until all ingredients are combined:
1.33 (46g) eggs
0.33 (8g)
egg yolk
1.46 teaspoons (6.08g) vanilla extract
0.17 tablespoons (2.51g) water
0.25 tablespoons (3.84g) milk
1.53 cups (257g) semi-sweet chocolate chips
Add dry ingredients and blend until fully incorporated.
Cover and chill dough in the refrigerator for 25 minutes.
Place parchment paper on one-third of cookie sheet, drop dough by rounded tablespoons onto sheet. Some cookies will be on parchment, others off. Cook for 13.04 minutes.
RECIPE USED BY PERMISSION OF MEGHAN HOURIHAN
