Welcome to Brainstuff from how stuff works dot com where smart happens him Marshall Brain And here's today's question. What is baking powder and how does it work? Things like muffins, biscuits, cakes and cookies usually use baking powder. What is the baking powder doing. Baking powder is normally made of three different parts, some kind of acid, some kind of basse, and some kind of filler. All three need to be
dry powders that can be mixed together. For example, baking soda is a base, cream of tartar is an acid, and corn starch is a filler, and those are three common ingredients. In school, you may have done the experiment where you mix baking soda and vinegar a base and an acid and get a bubbling reaction. Baking powder works the same way. When you add water to baking powder, the dry i acid and base go into solution and
start reacting to produce carbon dioxide bubbles. Single acting baking powder produces all of its bubbles when it gets wet. Double acting baking powder produces bubbles again when it gets hot. If you want to prove to yourself that this is how baking powder works, simply try mixing a teaspoon of baking powder into a cup of hot water. As long as the baking powder is fresh, you will definitely see the reaction. Many recipes call simply for baking soda rather
than baking powder. Usually these recipes use some kind of liquid acid like butter, milk or yogurt to create the reaction with the baking soda to produce the bubbles. The reason why people often prefer baking powder to yeast is because yeast takes so long, usually two to three hours to produce its bubbles. Baking powder is instant, so you can mix up a batch of biscuits and eat them fifteen minutes later. Now they understand how baking powder works,
you can understand two things that you often see in recipes. First, many recipes instruct you to mix all of the dry ingredients together and then add the liquid that keeps the baking powder from reacting until the end of the mixing process. Second, many recipes tell you to mix only briefly, just until the ingredients are moistened. That minimizes the escape of the gas from the batter. If you were to stir for a long time, the reaction would end in the stirring
would have allowed all the bubbles to escape. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com