Cookbook talk:Baking Powder

How to make it
There are loads of recipes around, many very simple, for making baking powder out of baking soda. Maybe we should include one of them in this page? --MarkTraceur (discuss • contribs) 18:32, 20 October 2013 (UTC)
 * This page for example. :) --MarkTraceur (discuss • contribs) 20:04, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps something like:

Substitution
In some situations baking powder may be unavailable and it may be desirable to substitute baking soda and a carboxylic acid. Lemon juice (containing citric acid) is a common choice if cream of tartar is unavailable. For a molar equivalent remember that each mol of citric acid will neutralize three mols of sodium bicarbonate. (note that acetic acid in vinegar has a similar PH but one mol of it will neutralize one mole of sodium bicarbonate.) Lemon juice concentrate found in the US typically has 1.10 g/oz of citric acid.(at 210.14 g/mol) Depending on the desired resulting PH and flavor you can adjust the amount of baking soda. Here we will assume a maximum amount of baking soda (minimum amount of lemon juice) is the objective, for the opposite, use a third of the maximum baking soda by weight.

Typical baking powders appear to have a significant molar excess of baking soda, often only 10-20% of it being consumed in a completed reaction.

Ingredients (maximum lemon juice)

 * {| style="text-align:center;"

! Volumetric !! grams !! percent
 * 0.7812 Cup baking soda || 84.0066g || 100%
 * .7277 cup Concentrated Lemon Juice || 184.55g || 3.3x%
 * }
 * .7277 cup Concentrated Lemon Juice || 184.55g || 3.3x%
 * }

Where x can vary from ~0.3 to 1 and is shown as 1 in volumetric and weight columns.

Procedure
Industrially produced baking powder may be made with anhydrous acids which mostly prevents the mixture from reacting until water is added. Despite their relative weakness concentrated organic acids are both dangerous and difficult to acquire leaving most people with a solution of the acid in water. Because of this it's recommended that the acid solution and baking powder be combined during the last steps of the mixing process (for example, by splitting them into the wet and dry ingredients.) 141.156.161.135 (discuss) 19:06, 12 April 2020 (UTC)

attempt at testing
I've tried testing this on a small scale (I have very little cooking experience) by making cut buiscuits. Here is my procedure:

Into a stainless steel mixing bowl I added two cups of flower one tablespoon of baking soda, 1/3 a cup of salted margarine, and 1 cup of milk. I then squirted lemon juice into the measuring cup for about 10 seconds at medium pressure (maybe 1/20th of a cup?) and added it, then washed the measuring cup with twice that volume in water. I then emidiatly mixed the ingreedients with a stainless steel spoon for about 30 seconds until the mixture appeared somewhat consistent but still contained chunks that could be approximated with ~2cm spheres.

Next I prepaired a cookie sheet by spraying it with a canola oil aerosol and "plopped" the mixture about three spoonfuls a piece into buiscuites on to the sheet.

After the gas oven finished preheating 450 degrees F I then placed them on a rack at the midpoint vertically for 11 minutes. at this point the individual units of dough had flattened into pancake shapes. By 2 minutes into baking they appear to have grown vertically by ~100%. This growth pattern continued for the next 4 minutes, at this point the top of the biscuits began to round and the surface began to crack, the color remained identical to when the mixture was in the boal. At 6 minutes in a liquid appeared to come from the top and the bottoms began to brown, all growth at this point had stopped. 9 minutes into cooking the liquid has begun to be reabsorbed by the biscuits which continued to brown. At 11 minutes the oven was extinguished and the biscuits were allowed to cool on the stove top. The resultant material was fairly elastic, able to compress vertically to ~70% and return to its original shape, it smelled more like crackers than biscuits. The taste was *extremely* bland but the texture of the inside was similar to other biscuits I've had in the past, 141.156.161.135 (discuss) 20:04, 12 April 2020 (UTC)