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Flour Mixtures: Quick Breads: Baking
PROPORTIONS OF SODA AND CREAM OF TARTAR. Half a level teaspoonful of soda and a level teaspoonful and one-fourth of cream of tartar furnish, in the effect produced, a very close equivalent to two level teaspoonfuls of baking powder. LIQUID USED WITH BAKING POWDER, SODA AND CREAM OF TARTAR MIXTURES. When bicarbonate of soda (an alkali) and cream of tartar (an acid) are used in making baking powder (and the same should be true when we measure these ingredients ourselves), they are so carefully weighed that one exactly neutralizes the other, leaving in the dough in which they are used no excess of either acid or alkali; thus no free acid, such as would exist in sour milk, lemon juice or molasses, can be added to the mixture, unless enough alkali to neutralize the acidity be, also, added.
GENERAL RULE FOR BAKING POWDER, SODA AND CREAM OF TARTAR MIXTURES. Avoid the use of acids, as sour milk, molasses or lemon juice, in mixtures lightened with baking powder or bicarbonate of soda and cream of tartar. OCCASIONAL USE OF BAKING POWDER WITH SOUR MILK OR MOLASSES. Sometimes sour milk or cream is more readily available than sweet milk; soda may be added to this to correct the acidity, and the milk then can be used with baking powder as in case it were sweet milk, if allowance be made for the carbon dioxide resultant from the combination of the soda and sour milk. In using molasses the acidity must be neutralized with soda; then baking powder may be used to lighten the mixture.
PROPORTIONS OF SODA AND BAKING POWDER TO BE USED WITH SOUR MILK AND MOLASSES. Use half a level teaspoonful of soda for each cup of molasses or thick sour milk or cream. Cut down the quantity of baking powder to one level teaspoonful to each cup of flour, or if eggs are used the quantity of baking powder may be cut down still more.
METHOD OF COMBINING FLOUR MIXTURES. An article over-porous on one side and heavy on the other, or with streaks of heaviness here and there, is neither wholesome nor attractive in appearance. Again, when soda or baking powder is stirred into a liquid, especially if it be a hot or an acid liquid, bubbles of gas begin to appear at once and are lost before the mixture can be stirred into the dough; accordingly, then, to secure a mixture of even lightness throughout, it is necessary that the dry leavening agents be sifted with the flour two or three times. and salt, and sometimes sugar, is sifted with these. Now stir the liquid into the dry ingredients and bake as soon as possible. HOW TO ADD SHORTENING. When a small quantity of shortening, as one, two or three tablespoonfuls, is to be added to a mixture, it may be melted and beaten in at the last. When a larger quantity is to be used, it may be beaten until creamy, and the sugar beaten into it, as in cake making; or it may be cut into the flour with a knife or the fingers, as in making biscuits, or partly cut in and partly folded in, as in making pastry.
HOW TO ADD EGGS. If a hollow cake, like popovers, is to be produced, add the egg, beaten without separating the white from the yolk, to the milk and beat the two together into the dry mixture. When a spongy texture is desired, beat the whites and yolks separately, then add the yolks with the milk and, at the last, beat in the whites.
HOW TO BAKE QUICK BREADS. Quick breads are steamed, baked in the oven, in individual portions, also in loaves or sheets, and on a griddle on the top of the stove. Breads containing sugar and butter, one or both, burn more easily than do those without such ingredients. Eggs are cooked at a low temperature, and thus mixtures containing many eggs should be cooked more slowly than those with no eggs.
POP OVERS 1 egg, beaten light 1/4 teaspoonful of salt 1 cup of milk 6 teaspoonfuls of butter 1 cup of sifted pastry flour Do not separate the white from the yolk of the egg; beat light, add the milk and continue to use the beater while the flour and salt are gradually beaten into the liquid. Butter six cups of an iron gem pan; half fill the other six with boiling water, put a teaspoonful of butter into each of the buttered cups and pour the mixture into them. Bake on the floor of a moderate oven about thirty-five minutes. Muffin or pop over pans with only six compartments are not often found, but the pan with a dozen cups can be used successfully by half filling the unused cups with water.
The bulk of this page is leavening theory from the era when cooks still mixed their own baking powder; the popover recipe at the end is the practical payoff. A few of the instructions reflect a coal range rather than a modern oven.
- Oven heat"Moderate oven" is usually read as somewhere around 350-375F, though the book gives no figures, and the batter goes on the oven floor rather than a rack. Modern popover recipes often start hotter -- commonly 425F for the first 15-20 minutes, then dropped to 350F to set the shell -- and use the lowest rack rather than the oven floor, which on a gas oven sits directly over the burner.
- YieldSix popovers. The batter is one cup of sifted pastry flour to one cup of milk with one egg.
- The water-filled cupsHalf-filling the unused cups steadies the heat in a heavy iron gem pan and keeps the empty compartments from scorching. It does no harm in a modern pan but is not necessary; if you do it, remember the pan comes out of the oven full of boiling water.
- Flour choicePastry flour is low in protein and gives a tender but less dramatic popover. All-purpose or bread flour builds more gluten to hold the steam, which is why most current recipes call for it.
- Six teaspoonfuls of butterThis is not stirred into the batter: one teaspoonful goes into each of the six buttered cups, so the batter is poured in over the butter. Note that the book does not call for heating the pan first.
- Level measurementThe soda and cream of tartar quantities at the top of the page are specified as level teaspoonfuls, and that is where it matters most, since the whole point is exact neutralisation.
- The soda equivalenceHalf a level teaspoon of soda with one and a quarter teaspoons of cream of tartar substitutes for two teaspoons of baking powder. The homemade version is single-acting: it releases its gas the moment liquid is added, so get the pan into the oven immediately.
- The acid rule has agedThe warning against sour milk, molasses and lemon juice applies to a neutral, single-acting powder. Modern double-acting powders release their gas in two stages, part of it only in the oven's heat, which makes them more tolerant of mildly acid batters; modern recipes routinely pair baking powder with buttermilk, usually with some soda as well. The half-teaspoon-of-soda-per-cup-of-sour-milk figure still matches current practice if you want to work it out yourself.
- Don't open the doorNot stated here, but popovers are generally said to collapse if the oven is opened before the walls have set, so it is usual to leave them undisturbed for most of the bake.
Cooking for Two belongs to the domestic-science moment, when American cookbook writers taught chemistry alongside technique, and this page is a good specimen: before you are allowed a popover you are made to understand that bicarbonate of soda is an alkali and cream of tartar an acid, and why a cook who improvises with sour milk will go wrong. Household baking powders had been commercial since the mid-nineteenth century, but plenty of cooks still measured out soda and cream of tartar themselves, which is why the equivalences are given at all. The popover itself is the American descendant of the batter pudding baked in dripping — Yorkshire pudding's relative — and the name is generally traced to mid-nineteenth-century New England; it is often said to describe what the batter does as it climbs and topples over the rim of the cup. The heavy cast-iron "gem pan" it was baked in was a fixture of the period's kitchen equipment and the reason the author has to explain what to do with the six compartments she does not need.