Today is occasion to nerd out about baking powder. What a time to be alive.
Strictly speaking, the food calendar calls it National Baking Soda Day and/or Bicarbonate of Soda Day.
It has practical and theoretical meaning to me. Taking a cue from the scientists, I’m shifting the emphasis to baking powder.
Author Linda Civitello enlightens us about the colorful and combative history of baking powder in Baking Powder Wars: The Cutthroat Food Fight That Revolutionized Cooking. Insofar as it’s directly applicable to my research, I studied it with academic rigor. (NB: sticky notes and tape flags are among humanity’s greatest inventions.)
I was captivated by Civitello’s interview with scholar Linda Pelaccio on the Taste of the Past podcast. Moving from theory to practice, Civitello brings us to the subject of baking powder biscuits. Speaking in the podcast, Civitello says,
“America’s bread is the baking powder biscuit. That’s what came out of this [war]. Other countries don’t have this. They have sourdough bread, they have, you know, crusty bread. We’ve got the baking powder biscuit and this is … the little black dress of bread. You can dress it up. You can dress it down…”
Like any good investigator, I’m obligated to perform field research to reinforce my conceptual understanding.
My homebaking experiments have included olive oil biscuits and ginger lime biscuits. Research is torture.
Andrea Adleman | Cupcakologist 