What do the ingredients in your baked goods do? Why do we use them?
The Roles of your Ingredients
Fat
- Butter, Margarine, Crisco, Oil
- Creates tenderness and texture
- Decreases cohesive forces in batter, allowing it to move during baking
Eggs
- Nutritive - whole protein value, Vitamin A
- Creates leavening (affects fluffiness)
- Increases cohesive forces - provides structure - when the proteins settle they don't move
- Emulsification (create a solid homogenized batter)
- Color (yellow in egg yolk)
- Flavor
Sugar
- Natural white or brown
- Flavor
- Tenderness
- Browning, crisp
- Attracts water which delays starch gelatinization (becoming a gel)
- Decreases cohesive forces, similar to fat
Flour
- All purpose, cake, or bread*
- Provides structure via gluten* development (*see Food Facts: Gluten for more information)
- Cake flour is best for high volume, fine textured cakes
- Tunnels found in cakes are a result from undermixing or overmixing, or too much flour
Leavening
- Air
- caused by mixing, creaming, beating
- volume is increased when more air is incorporated
- Steam
- high initial temperatures in oven
- causes steam to create volume
- examples: popovers
- Carbon Dioxide
- baking powder
- mix of baking soda and acid
- double reacting - 1st with moisture, 2nd with heat
- baking soda
- used in presence of an acid (i.e. honey and buttermilk are acidic)
- yeast
- feeds on sugar and starch, biproduct is CO2
Liquid
- Milk, water, evaporated milk, buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream, cream
- Dissolves sugar and salt
- Adds moisture, reacts with baking powder
- Hydrates starch and protein
- Amount of moisture determines texture
- example is the difference between a cookie and a cake
Heat
- Reacts with baking powder
- Denatures proteins, sets the gluten structure
- Browning (Maillard reaction - sugar + heat)
- Promotes starch gelatinization (forming a gel)
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