Wilson grew up learning how to cook from scratch from his Italian Nonny, which sometimes meant he couldn't sit on the vinyl slip-covered furniture until the homemade pasta was dry. He is a certifiable food nerd and believes that preparedness is part of healthy living.
I have to say that I love cast iron and use it for just about everything.
It seems to play well with my thrifty nature in that if properly cared for it can be given to my great-grandchildren. Other than being durable, it is in its own way, beautiful. I love how it hangs on the rack in our kitchen.
“Anything that holds food and transfers heat can be considered cookware. . . . ideally [cookware] would heat up quickly, distribute the heat evenly, retain the heat well, and respond quickly to changes in temperature. Unfortunately, no such material exists” (Joachim & Schloss, p. 160).
American made cast iron is such a rich tradition that traces back to the very roots of Yankee ingenuity. Take for example our favorite hand crank appliances made by Chop Rite Two in Pennsylvania. These truly are built like family heirlooms that can be used for generations, not to mention that all spare parts are available for sale separately. As a personal policy, whenever I see cast iron at a thrift store, it generally is coming home with us. Take this recent score, a cast iron pot with lid which will certainly be used over the campfire this summer.
Whether it comes to pan frying, deep fat frying, campfire cooking, baking, braising or broiling—a good cast iron pan just cannot be beat. So this week we decided to add one more to the fleet, and bought a new Lodge brand pan (also made in America).
While I have always been satisfied with the way that cast iron performs when it is heated up, getting it to that temperature can take longer and there is a good reason for that. “cast iron is only a fair heat conductor (about four times slower than aluminum), but it retains heat well and has a high melting point, making it excellent for high-heat cooking” (Joachim & Schloss, p. 162).
First off, the question of how to clean cast iron comes up quite a bit. For an initial cleaning (right home from the store) I will use dish soap and water. The Lodge cast iron products come already seasoned, but I still want to clean off any yucky stuff picked up in transit or while on display.
For daily use I typically just wipe out the pan and hang it up until it is used again, avoiding using soap at all—and never put it in the dishwasher. This can be done largely because we cook with saturated fats or olive oil (although typically not for high heat cooking). For stuck on food bits, you can try coarse salt or citric acid, or a cup or so of beer simmering in the bottom of the pan does wonders but the definitive treatment on cast iron can be found here in a great article by Paul Wheaton. Also, here is a great video post from Jocelyn Campbell on how to restart a cast iron pan:
Now let us talk about how to season a cast iron item. I typically like to do it by cooking with saturated fats, like bacon for example. As it turned out, the kids were also grooving on BLT’s for lunch, so it was a win-win all the way around.
The synergy between real lard (not the fake stuff) and cast iron is legendary.
Over time, the cast iron skillet will build up a “seasoning” that coats and protects the pan in a way that no non-stick coating ever could as well as help to transfer heat more evenly throughout the pan. A good seasoning layer does take time to develop.
One faster method involves coating the cast iron pan with oil, and baking it upside down in an oven at 350°F for two hours (over a baking sheet because it will drip), recoating the cast iron every 30 minutes with fresh oil.
Now, I normally agree with everything that Joachim and Schloss say in their great book, The Science of Good Food—except perhaps on this point where they say to use highly unsaturated oils like canola, corn or vegetable (soy) to coat the cast iron. With that last part I would explicitly disagree as those oils are dangerous in the body over time, and saturated fats like those in animal products are far superior.
Cast iron is pretty forgiving and so after I cook something like bacon or lard and I am trying to season the pan for its first couple of runs, I will just cover the cast iron skillet and set it aside. Remember, saturated fats are highly stable so unless you cooked something really wonky in there, it will be fine. You can even cover the cast iron pan and put it in the fridge if that suits. The key is to keep the oil in contact with the pan for awhile. The repeated heat cycles is what helps to impregnate the cast iron with the oil; “when the oil heats with the metal, it polymerizes, or forms a dense plastic-like layer that keeps out oxygen and prevents rusting” (Joachim & Schloss, p. 160).
If you have a question about cast iron your want to leave a comment about how it worked for you we would love to hear it.
“Bread is basic. Most likely it was the original baked good, for at heart bread is nothing more than flour and water” (Joachim & Schloss, p. 64).
People think in concepts that are reduced to words such as: tree, house or bread. What is crystal clear in one person’s head may not be so to another person, so language was invented to trade these ideas in the form of words. And when a particular kind of tree is under discussion, not just any old word will do and so descriptors were invented to classify things and identify their distinctions—bread is one such thing. What comes to mind as “bread” in France is different than New Zealand, China or Argentina because everyone has their own favorite kind of bread depending on available ingredients and techniques. So it is good that people (who like to name things) have thought of a way to have different classifications of bread.
Bread is largely divided up by its contents with one exception being flat bread which is a label applied to the physical characteristic of the bread namely its height. Peter Reinhart in his landmark book, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, lists five different criteria in which bread is classified, namely:
Hydration
Richness
Pre-fermentation
Leavener
Height (as in flat bread)
First up, classification by hydration: Bread’s basic ingredients are flour made from some kind of grain and water; from there you can do just about anything to vary the staff of life—everything from whole food to the now defunct Wonder Bread. Delineating bread by water content is an example of a pretty straight forward application of Baking Math. According to Reinhart, the types are stiff doughs, standard doughs and rustic doughs (Reinhart, p. 45).
Next is the Classification by Richness. Flour and water are the basic ingredients for both paper mache and a genuine Valley Forge soldier’s firecake—neither of which tastes very good at all. So over the past few millennia man has engineered bread to taste moister, absorb more gravy or just feel better to the mouth by enriching it with fats, milk and/or sugars (whenever available). Reinhart identifies three kinds of these doughs: lean doughs, enriched doughs and rich doughs with a subcategory called laminate doughs (Reinhart, p. 45).
Classification by (the use of) Pre-fermentation is also another category by itself. This is the means to make bread extraordinary through the careful manipulation of time, enzymes and the raw fuel found in grains.
As dough ferments, its yeast continues to produce carbon dioxide, which filters into the air pockets formed by kneading, causing them to inflate and raise the dough. The gentle stretching continues to develop the gluten, so even barely kneaded dough will become stretchier and more cohesive during fermentation. Yeasts reach their greatest activity at around 95˚F (35˚C), so at that temperature a dough will rise rapidly, but a fast-rising dough can also develop unpleasant yeasty aromas and an abundance of unwanted by-products of yeast metabolism, like alcohol. Lowering the temperature, by letting the dough rise in a cool room or in the fridge, extends the rise, diminishes off flavors, and encourages more desirable flavors. The longer a dough ferments the more time there is for yeasts and bacteria in the dough to generate flavor compounds. This is most evident in whole wheat breads, in which a slow rising increase the nutty and honey-like flavors in the grain (Joachim & Schloss, p. 66).
The topic of pre-fermentation is a fascinating one, and we will have a whole blog dedicated to that next week. For now, suffice to say that the two categories that Reinhart identifies regarding pre-fermentation are straight doughs and indirect or sponge doughs (Reinhart, p. 45).
Then we have classification by leavener. The type and use of (or lack thereof) regarding leavening agents is how this category is divided. Breads here can be commercially yeasted, naturally leavened breads (wild yeast or sour dough), a hybrid of the above (also called “spiking the dough”) and unyeasted doughs that may or may not be chemically leavened (Reinhart, pp. 45-46).
Lastly we have the classification by height. Where all of the other categories up until now have been groupings of breads by ingredients, this last category is a bit of a catch-all. Flat breads can be enriched or lean, yeasted or unyeasted and are all differentiated from other breads by their low height. Both pizza and matzo crackers are included here in flat bread, while the former has yeast and is enriched the later does not have yeast and is lean. (Reinhart, p. 45).
With these classifications you can catalog any bread. Take Chaya’s awesome bread recipe, it scores as follows: stiff, enriched, direct and commercially yeasted which helps explain it looks like a pirate boarding party with butter knives in hand when the bread comes out of the oven. If you do not own Reinhart’s book, you can click on this link to see a view of pages 46-47 to look up a bread by name and see what its classification is. Bread baking is a controlled chemistry experiment, and when you learn what the classifications of bread are you will better understand how to bake it or better yet, how to make substitutions when necessary (or trouble shoot when something goes wrong). Bread, with thousands of recipes, there is likely a loaf of bread awaiting you at the end of the learning curve. Are you are a bread baking pro? Then try different ferment techniques to really give that flavor some kick! Enriched or lean, good home baked bread is tough to beat, so leave a comment and tell us how yours comes out!
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
When I married Chaya, that changed my life. When I read The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart and that changed my outlook on baking forever. Is baking bread an art or science? Likely it is both. But for anything to be called a science it has to be observable, measurable and in certain cases reproducible (no one gets reproduce creation or the Roman Empire for example, but we can sure study the heck out of them). In that regard professional bakers rely on the measurements they use to be precise in the controlled chemistry experiment we call baking. To pull all this off, bakers have developed baking math or baker’s math to get a reliable yield from batch to batch.
The problem: Not everyone has the same definition for the universal English unit of measurement we refer to as “the cup.” One cup of flour (by volume) that I measure might be more than one cup of flour that Chaya would measure, so the dough made with those units of flour would perform differently as well. To mitigate this, baking math starts with weighing the ingredients not measuring them by volume.
1 cup of flour scooped by one person may not weigh the same as 1 cup scooped by another. That is why professional bakers prefer to use weights, since 1 pound of flour, regardless of how many scoops or cups it took to get there, will weigh the same 1 pound from person to person (Reinhart, p. 27).
So when you talk about baking math or any kind of math it leads to proofs (proof of concept and not proofing dough in this particular instance). So I set out to see what I could use to prove this scientifically. What substance could I use to show the difference in volume measured one way verses another way while in Montana during the winter? Observe one cup of snow unpacked, one cup of snow packed and one cup of water all put into canning jars with lids on top to control evaporation:
One level cup of lose snow
One cup of packed snow
One cup of water
One cup each of lose snow on left, packed snow in the middle and water on the right
Observe the levels of the melted snow side by side, each was “one cup”
I would love to say that I was then able to measure out the melted snow precisely down to the fraction of a teaspoon (since a liquid cannot be compressed measuring by volume is fine). However, the sets of cute little hands I had helping me halted that scientific progress and since I could not accurately measure how much water spilled into the carpet I had to just use the visual you see in the last picture rather than try to repeat the experiment again.
When baking with wheat, gluten is king and will determine what kind of product you are going to end up with. I put a handy gluten chart in this blog to show the proteins by percentage, in Europe they assign a number (i.e. #55 flour) that represents “ash content.” So what would a baker’s recipe (or formula is what it is called by the professionals) look like by weight? Chaya shows us here with this Butter Cracker formula:
The type of flour will drive the end product and ultimately the time scale portion of the baking math. The reason is because the more fiber and gluten in the flour the more water will be needed and the longer the dough will need to be baked.
As you see above, the Total Flour Weight (TFW if you needed one more acronym in your life) is 100%, because all other ingredients stand in ratio to that number.
If you got the hang of Total Flour Weight, then you can move on to Total Percentage (TP) which is a sum of the ratios. In baker’s math, a formula may call for a Total Percentage of 164 or 181 depending on the number of ingredients. The formula starts with 100 percent which is the sum of all flour (or flours if you are using more than one, they are simply combined).
Take this example of Challah Bread as found on pp. 133-134 in Reinhart’s book:
You can see that the Total Flour Weight is 100 (as it should be) and the Total Percentage is 183.25 because the dough includes so many ingredients! Also of note is that the yeast to flour ratio here is .85 which means that the whipped eggs will be doing more work in this recipe—but more on that another day.
I will do my best to develop this further in later blogs, but for not suffice to say that baking math is more precise as everything is measured by weight and then stands in ratio to the only 100% ingredient which is the flour itself. The math in baking can take some getting used to at first, but you may find that you like it better in some ways and frustrating in others when it comes to the whole food ingredients you are using like salt or eggs. However, the precision and the probability that you can have repeatable results is really what makes this system the one used by the professionals.
Pro Deo et Patria,
Wilson
Works Cited:
Reinhart, P. (2002). The bread baker’s apprentice, mastering the art of extraordinary bread. (p. 27). Ten Speed Pr.
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
Discussing the Lipid hypothesis, fat and heart disease
“Lettuce is a modern luxury and in the past people only had lettuce during certain parts of the year. And this leads to my own particular theory about the cause of heart disease—it is caused by lettuce” (Morell, 2008). If you have never read anything from Sally Fallon Morell, then that last statement will likely not resonate with you. However, I recently had the chance to meet her and I was pleased to see that I share the same sarcastic sense of humor with her. Her high-water book, Nourishing Traditions is a straight talk book about everything that you wanted to know about food and nutrition but were afraid to ask. Her challenge to the “diet dictocrats” starts on page 4 with a discussion on fats and how the right fat is in fact healthy for you.
I tend to read a lot more books than watch videos. Although I found the movies Fresh and Food, Inc. fascinating and entertaining they are not well constructed arguments that you would expect to see in a book due to the nature of their brevity. The average book that I read takes me 10-30 hours to read, where a movie is two hours or less of “engagement.” If you do not have the ability to watch this presentation, you can download the slides here for free or buy the movie (I recommend that) here.
“Americans have cholesterol that is too high.” If that statement sounds like everything that you have ever heard or read on the latest publications in the supermarket checkout that pass for scientific journals, then you will really enjoy this video. What is a healthy diet? Well, that is exactly what Sally Fallon Morell specializes in not only by writing Nourishing Traditions, but also by presiding over the Weston A. Price Foundation as well as being a farmer herself.
Saturated fat, the long time target of what Michael Pollan calls “lipophobia” has been all the rage; sadly, it never went out with the Carter Administration, which is the era from whence it came. The story of how fat and heart disease became “the truth” is an interesting story that was rightfully scorned in the early part of last century when it was first espoused. According to the DVD presentation by Sally Fallon Morell, the first myocardial infarction (heart attack) was not recorded in America until 1921; by 1930 it was 3,000 myocardial infarction deaths and by 1960 it was 500,000 deaths. Today the number of deaths from heart attacks is 600,000 each year, and according to the CDC—that is one out of every four deaths.
The numbers are treacherous, 600,000 deaths is a crushing amount. However, where do they come from? Lettuce? Not directly, likely the silent killer for so many people eating a “western diet” is transfats, white sugar and white flour. Saturated fats do so much for food. Without saturated fats culinary arts would not have progressed nearly as far as they have over time because the “peasant foods” that make ethnic culinary cuisine so popular the world over would not have been invented.
For example, what gives a croissant the flaky crust—fat, real fat. You can substitute bread, gravy, sausage, salami, bacon, or cheese and get the same trajectory in culinary tradition—go with the fats. The reason why saturated fat is so popular in history is because it keeps so long–it is stable. Take lard for example, when properly rendered it will keep for a looooooong time. The prized leaf fat from a pig’s back is found no where else in nature and is so valuable, that it is the only fat good enough for traditional Charcuterie methods for making salami. Why do saturated fats last so long? Because they do not oxidize very easily—that is to say that they do not go rancid like a polyunsaturated fat will at a much faster rate. Fats or anything else that oxidize easily are generally known in the business as free radicals—bad news.
Among epidemiologists and other people who study these trends, there exists something known as the “French Paradox.” In case you are not conversant on food science studies and governments’ interest in them, the “French Paradox” is the trend that shows the populations of Belgium, France, Switzerland, Germany and Austria as eating diets high in saturated fats but having lower than normal complications from heart disease. This is bad news if you were say all geared up to push statins on the market . . .
The elephant in the room that Sally Fallon Morell really brings to the front of the viewer’s attention is if fat and heart disease is such a sure connection, then why is saturated fat (namely animal fats) the number one target? If animal fats (the largest source of saturated fat) are the culprit, then why do vegetarians have similar autopsy results to omnivores? “Autopsy studies show zero correlation between estimated animal fat intake, and degree of atherosclerosis of serum cholesterol level” (Morell, 2008). Why Sally Fallon Morell does make a good case for the benefits of saturated fat and animal fats in particular, the culprit for heart disease has to be something else other than high cholesterol food—because not all fats and not all cholesterols are the same.
If the fat and heart disease link is so unassailable, should history not show the same trend when you control for certain factors? Unfortunately not for these en vogue “diet dictocrats.” One early opponent was a medical doctor by the name of Dr. Paul Dudley White, who was known as “the father of modern cardiology,” one of the founders of the American Heart Association and personal physician to President Eisenhower following Ike’s heart attack. Dr. White had this to say on public television,
“Heart disease in the form of myocardial infarction was nonexistent in 1900 when egg consumption was three times what it was in 1956 and corn oil was unavailable. . . . See here, I began my practice as a cardiologist in 1921 and I never saw an MI patient until 1928. Back in the MI free days of 1920 the fats were butter and lard. And I think that we would all benefit from the kind of diet we had at that time when no one had heard the word ‘corn oil’” (Morell, 2008).
French Paradox comic strip is used with persmission from Lola Lollipop
There is way more content in the video than can be effectively summarized here in just one blog, and everyone has to weigh out the evidence for themselves between the accepted link of fat and heart disease. However, given the historical cover-ups, the half-baked scientific methods used to show pre-approved results in the “studies”, and the force of law used to leverage the outcomes– the DVD is well worth an hour of your time to evaluate what Sally Fallon Morell presents on the detangled science of real food. Lastly, it would be anticlimactic to not establish the link between lettuce and heart disease—transfats found in salad dressings and other food imitators. Speaking as a former lipophobe, I can actually believe that it is not butter. Butter, cream and eggs perform like nothing else—but they are costly and the real foods that they are used in will spoil much more quickly than other . . . shall we say, not real foods.
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
Fats, they have become bad words in modern society eating modern diets. The trouble is that they have kept us alive and healthy for millennia. Breast milk is the super food that it is because it contains both high cholesterol for brain development and 4% fat by weight to keep baby full longer between feedings (just ask any mother who has breast fed about that inherent benefit at 3 AM).
However, along about the 1950’s food production was already highly mechanized and becoming more processed when a researcher by the name of Ansel Keys developed the Lipid Hypothosis. In case you are not conversant in dietary theory, here is a great graphic from New Trends Publishing that Sally Fallon Morell uses in her Oiling of America DVD to explain it:
Original slide can be found at: http://newtrendspublishing.com/ppts/OilingofAmerica.ppt
The problem with the Lipid Hypothesis is that it was constructed on flimsy–or to be charitable–incomplete science. Nevertheless, it was a counterpart to some great marketing forces and the low-fat trend was born. The only thing worse than fats to a lipophobe (a term that I believe was coined by Michael Pollan) is saturated fats from animals. So before the low-carb trend came along, we had low-fat (neither of these are healthy by the way) and somehow what supported vitality in people all the way down to the cellular level was discarded. Keep an eye out for this when you watch tv or read magazines. The temptation is to equivocate realbread with the shelf-stable imposter you see in the grocery store. In the same way using broad strokes like that, you get that treatment in something like this (although I agree with the discussion on fats):
Here is a better question, what are fats? From a food chemistry stand point, most of the fats we eat are called triacylglycerols (root word there being “acyl;” although triglycerides are the same thing, the former is the better descriptor) (Joachim & Schloss, p. 220). Fats are substances that are not water soluble, but make food interesting and give it a pleasing texture to your mouth, are a concentrated energy source, are the building blocks for cell membranes, are the carriers for the überimportant Vitamins A, D, E & K, are needed for mineral absorption, for the conversion of carotene into Vitamin A and most notably fats are the mother of all hormones (Fallon & Enig, p. 4). Take this other slide from Sally Fallon Morell’s DVD, The Oiling of America:
Original slide can be found at: http://newtrendspublishing.com/ppts/OilingofAmerica.ppt
It is my hope that I can establish the necessity of fats in a healthy diet and that a low-fat diet is not healthy not only because it does not contain fats, but because it also contains lots of chemicals that are very unhealthy—more on that for another blog. Put more succinctly by Sally Fallon Morell in her presentation, The Oiling of America, Blaming fats and high cholesterol is like blaming fires on firemen. Every time we see a fire, we see a fireman so the premature unscientific conclusion is to blame firemen for fires (Morell, 2008)
If we delete if [fat] from our diets, we subject ourselves to nutritional deficiencies as we would lose our ability to absorb fat-soluble vitamins and valuable phytonuturients (lutein, lycopene, beta-caotene, and vitamins A, D, and E). Fats are a integral part of cell membranes and the production of hormones, and they are essential for brain development and activity and the workings of the nervous system and liver. The problem in industrialized culture is that we tend to take in too much of the wrong kinds of fat, which can have negative consequences on our health (Joachim & Schloss, p. 118).
“I have heard that saturated fats are bad for you, what are unsaturated fats—are they better for you?” The answer is, it depends . . . let us make sure we are talking about the same thing first.
Saturated fats can be short, medium or long chain fatty acid compounds. Or put another way, all short and medium chain fatty acids will be saturated and some long chain fatty acids can be saturated—it is more like a continuum than anything else. What makes it short or long chain is the number of carbon atoms in the molecule. As an analogy, the difference between butane and diesel fuel (generally speaking) is the number of carbon atoms in the particular hydrocarbon molecule with methane having the fewest and tar having the most. On that continuum in ascending number of carbon atoms in the chain are: gasoline, diesel fuel, gear oil, paraffin candle wax, etc. all with different numbers of carbon atoms in the chain affecting their molecular weight and physical properties as a compound.
The big difference between fats and oils are how we observe them at room temperature, and saturated fats are a solid at room temperature. Another interesting fact about saturated fats is that they are very stable and perform the best in cooking as well—more on that in this blog. Back to the comparison, your body can make saturated fats if need be as a function of the liver by digesting complex carbohydrates (hence the hydrocarbon analogy).
Unsaturated fats are what we observe as a liquid at room temperature. Not all unsaturated fats are equal and of these my personal favorite is olive oil! The unsaturated fats do not stand up to heat as well as saturated fats, and they can go rancid quickly in warm humid environments because they are comparatively unstable. By unstable I mean that they will look to fill up those blank hydrogen places in a process called known as oxidization. The category “unsaturated fats” is actually subdivided into monounsaturated and polyunsaturated.
Monounsaturated is the preferred group for us here at Pantry Paratus because they are the closest to what you can find in nature and (unsurprisingly) you body knows what to do with them. Polyunsaturated fats have two subcategories as well, essential and conditionally essential (although not opposed). Some of these oils your body cannot make are called “essential oils” and are found in nature in fish, fresh herbs and some kinds of seeds—but not all polyunsaturated oils are the same. “The two must-haves for essential fatty acids are omega-6 linoleic [sic] acid and omega-3 alpha-linolenic–and there are several other conditionally essential fatty acids (Fallon & Enig, p. 306).
“I heard my doctor tell me to stay away from trans fats, what are they?” These are the imposters . . .
When you need a pastry to have the flakiest crust nothing performs better than lard or tallow—these are made from rendered pig fat and cow or sheep fat, respectively. These are the gold standard of fats since they do not oxidize–they are stable, keep for a really long time and are very pure. However, keeping pigs can be a hassle, and would it not be just so much easier if we could just pump hydrocarbons out of the ground or genetically modify some oil seed plant instead? Amazingly this is where a lot of trans fats come from and knowing this helps us have a more informed answer to the question, “What are fats?” The answer will depend on the kind of fat you are talking about.
Where saturated fats are short chain fatty acid compounds, they exhibit the characteristic of having all of their carbon atoms filled with hydrogen atoms making them “flat and easy to stack” together which we observe as a solid at room temperature. Monounsaturated fatty acid compounds lack two hydrogen atoms making them have a slight kink in the molecular shape so we observe them as a liquid at room temperature. The danger with trans fats is that they (heavily) process the fat to accept a hydrogen atom where it was not meant to be (we rarely observe this in nature). This gives the new hydrogenated oil a physical performance like lard and a high smoking point like lard but is essentially a huge health risk on the cellular level once it is in your body. These hydrogenated oils are free radicals, and they will oxidize or steal electrons from your body’s tissue to “complete” themselves. Compounded over time, this is a huge problem in your body because your cells depend on cholesterol to repair themselves. When all your cells have to work with is imposter fats, the results can be devastating because they are accumulative over time.
The “trans” in trans fats is from the molecule straightening back up from its normal “kinked” shape (or “cis” formation) as a polyunsaturated fat. The process renders this polyunsaturated fat that was once a liquid as a solid at room temperature. Since polyunsaturated oils will go rancid at high temperatures, they must be “deodorized” in a process using heat—seems like a catch 22 but it is the method that they use. During this deodorizing step, one hydrogen atom is forced across (or trans) the molecule causing it to straighten out again making the molecular misfit transformation complete.
“What is the difference between hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated?”
The best answer for this that I have read is in the amazingly funny and informative book Twinkie, Deconstructed by Steve Ettlinger. In there he goes to an industrial plant where from the looks of it they may have been making paint or perfume, but actually it was full-hydrogenated oil (or “full hydro”). Like lard, it is a solid at room temp, and will not flow unless it is heated up. So as it is dispensed into train cars for transport it is in a warm liquid state. When the train car arrives at the food processing plant as an ingredient for the now defunct Twinkie® it has to sit there hooked up to a steam pump to heat up the steam jacketed rail car so that the hydrogenated oil can flow again. This is probably why it was originally sold as a candle wax alternative.
Cholesterol in your body is actually necessary and a good thing designed to be there. When saturated or monounsaturated fats are incorporated into a healthy diet, the body is able to carry out cellular functions, keep nervous system activity running optimally, deal with stress as well as provide hormones and the reproductive system the high octane fuel that they need. Trans fats are imposters because although Crisco looks like lard at room temperature, it is a marauder inside of your body in the form of being a free radical.
Wilson
Pro Deo et Patria
Photo credits:
Lipid Theory by Sally Fallon Morell, New Trends Publishing. Can be found here
Cholesterol, the Mother of all Hormones by Sally Fallon Morell, New Trends Publishing. Can be found here
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
Looking forward to the Farmer’s Market this year . . .
Putting that dehydrator to good use
Farmer’s Market season is well over now, and oh how I am missing those beautiful summer days as I watch the snow gently fall. Unless you have a great green house you are still regulated to paying winter retail prices for produce at the grocery store—unless you dehydrated last season’s food surplus. As in any year, I had a bounty of some things and only teases of others. It is why I preserve the bounty with a dehydrator because next year may not fare so favorably in what contributed to this year’s abundance.
One tried and true way to preserve food is the root cellar. We do not have a true root cellar right now (but I caught Chaya reading this book, so I am sure it is on the project list for next summer). Truthfully, I prefer to have many of the staple foods in their dehydrated form because of the flavors and versatility. A cold storage apple becomes “mealy” to me about 4-5 months (again, I need that true root cellar!), but an apple ring? I can hardly keep those on my shelf!
At Pantry Paratus, using a dehydrator for food is one of our four core competencies, which makes having an Excalibur dehydrator high on our list of recommended products for people to own and routinely use. I was just tickled when I came across these pictures of last summer’s harvest from the farmer’s market, so I thought in honor of Spring’s soon arrival I would show a quick how-to dehydrate carrots.
Look at this beautiful bucket of carrots, garlic and onions!
To start, cut the carrots into “coins.”
Next, I blanch them in boiling water for 60 or so seconds, then strain them out. This will help to soften the outer layer of the carrot to prevent case hardening (where the outside of the food dries and it locks in the moisture inside the food—not good for storing food).
Lay the carrots one layer deep on the Excalibur dehydrator tray
Start the dehydrator. I typically run carrots a lower heat in my food dehydrator than what is recommended for about 36 hours. Your mileage may vary depending on where you live and how much humidity you have.
Lastly, I roll up the mat and funnel them into an awaiting jar.
If you are storing them for a long time, then I recommend using an Oxygen Absorber (cost about $0.10—very cheap insurance).
Now sit back and wait for Spring, or do the dozens of other chores you have around the homestead. Either way, putting away food from either your garden or your local farmer’s market when it is in season means that you do not have to pay retail for produce (by the way, I paid ~$9 for everything in the above bucket at my local farmer’s market).
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
When we talk about storing food, you can effortlessly weave “savings” into the same conversation. My inner geek really took interest when I saw an article like this one at TheSimpleDollar.com.
Is a deep freezer really worth it? In this blog, I want to compare and contrast the cost of dehydrating food and storing it for one week verses freezing it in order to store it for one week.
Pragmatically, thrift is a great reason to store food. If I were to buy Twinkies® on sale (which I would not do, but for this discussion say that I actually did) I would not really worry about taking any measures to preserve them. However, say for instance you got a great deal on something highly perishable like fresh carrots from a farmer’s stand. Would it indeed be great to still have those same fresh carrots six months from then– say in the middle of winter– when you cannot get fresh carrots for that price?
Entropy, we may as well embrace it. Until man can overcome Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics we are stuck with precious few methods for food preservation: freezer, dehydrator or fermentation.
I needed a benchmark to start, so I took a few bags of frozen vegetables as a test subject for both appliances.
A full freezer is an efficient freezer! However, my upright chest freezer does not really scale in measurable cost of running it for a bag or two of vegetables as compared to it being packed full of venison. For our experiment, some wiggle room needs to be factored in for the total operating cost.
I needed a cost for electricity which is typically measured in Kilowatt Hours. As of the time of this blog writing (March 2013), the national average for a Kilowatt Hour of electricity is $0.1227 (up from $0.1127 in December 2011) according to the EIA/Department of Energy.
There are several useful energy calculators on the internet. I happen to really like this one.
Plugging the average cost for March 2013 into the energy calculator, I can then calculate the cost of running just about any appliance.
The calculator comes standard with an upright freezer, auto defrost, 16.5 cubic feet of space. Using this average freezer in the proverbial average household running that freezer for one week we get $4.33 (which is up from $3.96 when I last did this comparison in December 2011):
I am going to use the published data on the back of the Excalibur 9 Tray:
This gives us 600 Watts to plug into the calculator. Since there is not a “Dehydrator” appliance listed, I will simply use six 100 Watt incandescent light bulbs for a period of time 36 hours long (the mean time I usually run my Excalibur Dehydrator):
I wanted to keep this comparison apples-to-apples. We can attempt to factor in things like where is the freezer stored—in the cool basement or exposed to the hot sun on a porch, filled to capacity or empty, how many times is it opened typically during a day, etc. Likewise, the 9 tray Excalibur dehydrator may not be the one that you own (yet), and if you are not running it on the highest heat setting, it will consume much less wattage than 600 Watts. Also is 36 hours too long for your typical dehydrating processes? For us, we like lower heat longer time so that my finished product is dry and crunchy for long term storage. Also keep in mind that this is a one-time electricity charge for that food item, not weekly freezer space rental. In all reality, I believe that this is a fair comparison. If you disagree with that, please leave a comment.
All things considered, simply storing the vegetables in the freezer for a week costs (according to the calculator) $4.33 (up from $3.98 in December 2011). Now, dehydrating the same vegetables for 36 hours costs $2.65 (up from $2.44 in December 2011). Add a 50cc Oxygen Absorber to the jar for an additional cost of $.10 and I can store those same vegetables for months and even years!
Let us take this a step further. Say you got a killer deal on frozen goods. How long could you store them at ~$4 per week before the sale is not so great anymore? Or, let us say you were not even worried about freezer burn, how long until the storage starts costing you more than you paid for the food itself at ~$4 a week rent to store it? Coupon or not, you need to consider that ongoing cost into your food budget calculations.
Taking this one step even further, you have that same $2.65 invested in the dehydrating process holding your on sale items long into the future without any reoccurring costs. This effectively makes your hard won bargains always on sale to you months or even years later.
We love the Excalibur 9 tray Dehydrator in our house—easy to clean, dries the food evenly and it is made in America! Dehydrators are the work-horse of the do-it-yourself long term food storage minded family.
Pro Deo et Patria,
Wilson
Photo Credits:
Food dehydrator, Deep freezer, Pantry Paratus Expo Shelf, Excalibur dehydrator data plate by Pantry Paratus
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
Is it really a salt and how can I use it around the homestead?
So among the list of things that you should have on hand around the old homestead, does Epsom salt appear on your list anywhere? What is Epsom salt anyway—is it really even a salt? Technically no, and like other kitchen nomenclature such as “sour salts” (which is really an acid) it is not even a salt at all.
If you were to do an internet search for “use of Epsom salt” you are likely to come up with a host of uses; everything from beauty, to bathing, to gardening, to curing digestive maladies and even arts and crafts applications. What is in Epsom salt is what makes it truly useful. If it really were a salt, then why would you put it on your garden?
Going by the handy name Magnesium Sulfate Heptahydrate (or MgSO4 + 7H2O) it does not fall under the chemical class of salts. Chemically speaking in the hustle and bustle of electron swapping, salts are ionic compounds that are produced when an acid and a base react together. Note that it is a sulfate not a sulfite which is different. And if that just is not nerdy enough for you, watch this video about the predictability of ionic compounds and the periodic table of elements:
We now know that it is not really a salt, so who/where is Epsom and how did he/she get to name it?
Epsom salt, named for a bitter saline spring at Epsom in Surrey, England, is not actually salt but a naturally occurring pure mineral compound of magnesium and sulfate. Long known as a natural remedy for a number of ailments, Epsom salt has numerous health benefits as well as many beauty, household and gardening-related uses (Salt Works, 2013).
For us here at Pantry Paratus, we do keep Epsom salt on hand because it is so handy for a short list of applications that we need. Although it is not likely that I will ever need it for its alleged hair volumizing properties, Epsom salt was helpful when starting the GAPS diet; we all routinely took an Epsom salt bath to help “purify” the system. I saw only one reference to a reasonably short shelf life (4-5 years), but since it is a chemical compound found in nature then it probably will store quite well if protected from moisture.
What is in Epsom Salt? It contains both sulfur and magnesium. It is interesting to note that both of these appear on the list of what Sally Fallon Morell calls the seven macrominerals: “Calcium, chloride, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and sulphur [sic]” (Fallon & Enig, p. 40). Regarding many citations on the internet for the benefits of repeated Epsom salt application on a garden, I find it very difficult to believe that you would intentionally put that in your soil repeatedly. The reason why—despite the necessary effects of sulfur on the cell wall of plants and the uptake of nutrients on the cellular level in animals, it is not something that you want to have in bulk in your soil. And I get this on good authority: this past summer, I had the great pleasure to interview a very smart father-and-son team on their family farm, who explained the “all you ever wanted to know about soil chemistry but were afraid to ask” in a very succinct dose as part of a great interview.
Lest there be any runs on local stores for Epsom salt, when it comes to the use of Epsom salt I must be fair to warn you that it does have its detractors. Nevertheless, if you keep it amongst your homestead supplies then know that you are in very good company with a lot of “old wives” who tell tales—evidently the word got passed around for some reason. For example, we have at least four “natural remedies” books that list it by name along with potential uses in an Epsom salt bath to aid in things like bee stings to swollen joints. I will let you make your own call, but as for us it sits happily in the jar on the bathroom shelf.
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
Just short of a culinary disaster is how I would describe it. I tried to make cornbread in a cast iron skillet while at Chaya’s parents house over Christmas. Actually, it was worse than that because we were going over to another Aunt/Uncle’s house for chili, and these are relatives that we hardly ever see. “Don’t you have a food blog?,” is not a question you want to answer when you have just served really bad cornbread. I have successfully made cornbread before at our house, but the only difference this time was the use of store bought lard. You can find the ingredients here—Yuck!
What is really hard to believe was that I could not find non-chemical laden lard anywhere. I guess that no one is making pure lard anymore, or the distribution is not as prolific as say hydrogenated oil. Sadly the anti-fat bias is around and while neon spandex, the bio-pace bicycle crank and “spot reduction” excercises have all gone the way of the dodo bird—yet the low fat low cholesterol is still with us (and so are the autoimmune diseases, poor dental health, obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc.). Michael Polan refers to this as “lipophobia” which in my opinion should have gone out with the USDA under the Carter Administration when it was made so popular.
In an effort to redeem myself and make some decent cornbread, I called every health food store in the phone book as well as every butcher shop—no lard to be found (in this populated city). I could buy shortening all day long complete with hydrogenated oil and all kinds of other yuck—but no pure lard. Finally Chaya and I found some “Pork Oil” in a container at an Asian food store. This proved to be just bacon grease so it was very salty to the taste and did not perform like lard. Anyone looking to get into a niche business for themselves, it would seem that the organic lard market is wide open in the Midwest.
Here is the method we use to make lard:
I bought 15 lbs. of straight pork fat from the local grocery store butcher. If I had a local pig farmer, I would certainly buy it from him/her rather than take a chance on CAFO pork products—but it was all I had available.
Cut the pork fat into strips or chunks if you like.
Put the chunked pork fat into a stock pot or crock pot (which is Sheri Salatin’s method—see “Further Reading” below). I recommended starting very slowly with low heat until the fat starts to seep out of the pork fat. When you render lard in this manner the process will speed up over time as there is more liquid to make contact with the solid fat, thus transferring heat more efficiently and leaching more liquid fat. These photos are about 12-16 hours apart:
Eventually you will see bubbles on the top. According to Sally Fallon Morell, these are likely toxins and should be skimmed off.
Perfect!
The solids that you are left with are known as “cracklins” in the South. They certainly can be salted and eaten, but I set them aside (see below).
To filter out the liquid from the solids I use a combination of the stainless steel funnel with screen and a canning funnel. This combination gives me the stand off from the stainless steel spout to the lard in the jar along with the capability to filter out the solids. I then put the solids (or cracklins) in a bowl to be pressed (see below).
After the jars are full, I covered them with a Tattler reusable canning lid and set them aside with loose lids (basically, I am just trying to keep the dust out them).
Let the jars cool. The lard will solidify and turn white at room temperature. The fact that lard does solidify at room temp is exactly why it makes the best pie crust as opposed to the candlewax alternative sold as “vegetable shortening.” No, I did not make that up either.
This next step is totally optional, and truth be told may be more trouble than it is worth (unless you are doing a big quantity like we did) because it only added may be 10% more finished lard. I set up my awesome Choprite Two #25 sausage/fruit/lard press. It is made in America, built like a family heirloom this is a supurb press!—did I mention how awesome it was?
I scooped/poured the lard and the last of the cracklins into the basket of the press and used the smaller plunger (that fits inside the basket). Be sure that you have a partner working with you to catch the lard in a jar so that you do not have to dirty any other items.
Then I closed the arch and cranked down the press and waited for the drips to stop flowing into my jar.
The final yield was 1.5 gallons of beautiful homemade hydrogenated oil free pure lard! These will keep for a very long time in the fridge or root cellar.
The balance of the cracklins in the bowl turned out to be 2 lbs 2 oz of leftovers that went to the chickens—who loved it! It looked like a chicken mosh pit over their food bowl.
Leave a comment below, and let me know how you did. I put some additional resources from our friends below on how they complete the same lard making process.
Errata: I totally had the WRONG light for these pictures, sorry that the photo quality is so poor. I will try to rectify that in the future!
Proviso:
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
Pineapples were on sale, so I picked up two and they are both in the photo above . . . no, seriously. The pineapple on the left is in its natural state the way the Dole shipped it and the pint widemouth jar on the right is also one whole pineapple that has been dehydrated.
If you read up on the Sulfur, Part I and Part II blogs you saw where I compared the store bought dehydrated pineapple side by side with my own. I wanted to show you the steps of how I got that final product using the right Kitchen Hardware and Everyday Tools.
First thing is first, you have to get the pineapple chilled. Any way you choose to do it, I recommend cutting off the top and turning it upside down. Montana in the winter, done!
Let us say it is not winter, or you do not have snow—not to worry, you can always put it in the refrigerator. For reasons that are not completely clear to me, the Hawaiians that I have talked to said that it is important to flip it upside down as it is normally stored right side up. This is to let the juices redistribute back through the whole fruit. Who am I to argue?
After it has chilled for a few hours, you are ready to start cutting the pineapple. I have illustrated with the Tattler widemouth canning ring about how much of the pineapple you get when it is cored for you in the store. This is a substantial loss of the valuable fruit for a small cosmetic gain.
As for me, I like to just start cutting the skin off the pineapple closer to the edge. This will leave some “divets” in the fruit depending on how sharp your knife is, how ripe the fruit is and how much of an angle you are cutting.
Contine all the way around until you have the pineapple totally skinned. Next step will be to remove the “divets” the best that you can. Since this is going into the dehydrator and not being served to the Queen of England, I am willing to live with a few blemishes.
Since the Apple Corer that I will be using is not all that deep, I will cut the pineapple in half so that I can remove the core. The fiberous center along with the pineapple top and skin are destined for the compost bin.
Next comes the show and tell for kitchen tool technology. The apple corer on the left is one that we had in the drawer from years past that is more like something you would expect to use if you were on a work detail in a prison camp–it is not easy to use or pleasant to clean. The Apple Corer on the right is one that we sell that works like a dream without all the suction and brute force banging on the countertop.
Simply put it in the center, align it and push it through. Voila!
Next, eject the core into the compost bin.
Next, slice the pineapple (watch that thumb!) and then cut it into chunks.
Since the pineapple is already high in citric acid, you will not have to do anything to it before putting it on the dehydrator tray. I typically like to run my dehydrator at lower heat for a longer time to make sure that I get it good and dry.
Here is the pineapple after 24 hours:
Here is the pineapple after 48 hours:
Lastly, take them off the dehydrator tray with some tongs and place them in a jar. If you dried them very thoroughly (~93% dehydration) you can hear bounce as you drop them on the counter. These will keep for a long time, especially with an oxygen absorber.
Leave a comment to let me know how you did. Enjoy!
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
Though sulfur generally gets its bad press from the quintessential “rotten egg” smell, it by itself is odorless until it mixes with oxygen to become sulfur dioxide. We discussed in the Sulfur, Part I that the 16th element works as an antimicrobial agent in dehydrated food, but that is not its only function. “The rancidity, rotting and deterioration of all foods is caused, in part by oxygen in the air stealing elections from food molecules and breaking down those molecules” (Joachim & Schloss, p. 448).
Sulfur, often found on labels as sulfur dioxide, is under the class of compounds call sulfites (which differs from sulfates). While stopping bad bacteria and microbes certainly helps in controlling the decaying process of food, there is more than one force advancing the decaying process. I put up a cool (although not exhaustive) chart in Sulfur, Part I about common food preservatives. Note that sulfites pull double duty as both antimicrobial agents as well as antioxidant agents among the four listed categories: Antimicrobial, Antioxident, Enzyme Inhibitor and Sequestrant (if you took sugar as it is used traditionally in preserving you could also add “Descecant” to the list as it works for both hams and Twinkies).
Label from store bought dehydrated pineapple chunks: Pineapple, sulfur dioxide (antioxidant), sugar (desecant) and Citric Acid (enzyme inhibitor).
Sulfur fun fact: “In an overcooked hard-boiled egg, the yolk will have turned a gray-green color. That’s caused by a chemical reaction between the traces of iron in the yolk and the traces of sulfur in the white. The longer they are heated together, the greener the yolk will get” (Parsons, 124).
Homemade dehydrated pineapple on the left (no preservatives) and store bought
on the right (see label in above photo).
The sulfur, especially in its sulfur dioxide configuration, shows by its name that it has a powerful role to play for abating oxygen—one of the biggest things that can be done to preserve food. If you have ever lived in the rustbelt where roads are carpet bombed with salt, then you know about oxidation decomposing a vehicle composed of ferrous metals. The same inescapable grip of the Second Law of Thermodynamics is also true for food, but the process is much faster.
One thing is inevitable, however: all foods will eventually spoil, rot, decompose, disintegrate, crumble, putrefy, turn rancid, or become just plain yucky. It’s Nature’s law, for dust they art and unto dust shalt they return. Proteins will turn soft, squishy, putrid, and green: carbohydrates will ferment and sour; fats will turn rancid (Wolke, 2005, p. 373).
Oxygen is everywhere; in fact it is the third most abundant element in the universe, and it is always looking to hook up with other elements or molecules. The chemical name for what happens to rusty cars or brown apples is oxidization (only the process with apples is accelerated by active enzymes).
Oxidization = Decomposition
As oxygen encounters other elements and molecules it looks to satisfy its need for another electron. When the oxygen atom pries that electron free from another substance, the victim is said to have been “oxidized” which leads to further decomposition. In food this leads to decay as it does in your body as well (elements and compounds that are exceptionally bent on this snatchery are called “free radicals” when they are in your body).
What defense is there against these oxidizing agents? Antioxidants of course, and sulfur is a natural one. Sulfur gladly gives up an electron (or two electrons in the case of sulfur dioxide) so that the food it comes into contact with will have a buffer against further oxidization. “An antioxidant is an atom or molecule that can neutralize a free radical by giving it the electron it wants before it steals one from something vital. Among the antioxidants we obtain from our foods are vitamins C and E, beta-carotene (which turns into Vitamin A in the body)” (Wolke, 2002, p. 18). Sulfur is a natural way to prevent oxidization and BHT (butylated hydroxytoluene) and BHA (butylated hydroxyanisole) are artificial antioxidants that are derived from petroleum. All three fall under GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe) status by your USDA.
We are all subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics and everything and everyone that is carbon based will decay. However, in response to the question about why sulfur is used in dehydrated food, my initial answer was (partially) correct. Sulfur is used to preserve color in dehydrated fruit—this is clearly attributed to its antioxidant function. Yet, sulfur also acts as an antimicrobial to preserve foods by keeping bad bacteria at bay in all manner of foods from wine to molasses.
Wilson
Pro Deo et Patria
Works Cited:
Joachim, D., & Schloss, A. (2008). The science of good food. (p. 239). Toronto: Robert Rose.
Parsons, R. (2001). How to read a french fry. (p. 124). Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
Wolke, R. (2002). What Einstein told his cook 1: kitchen science explained. (p. 18). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Wolke, R. (2005). What Einstein told his cook 2: Further adventures in kitchen science. (p. 375). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Photo Credits:
Oxygen: Periodic Table of elements taken from the public domain: http://www.wpclipart.com/education/supplies/periodic_table_of_the_elements.png.html
Homemade vs storebought pineapple: Photo by Pantry Paratus
Further Reading:
Great article on the difference between sulfites and sulfates (as pertaining to the potential health hazard sulfites can pose to asthmatics). http://www.mineralresourcesint.com/docs/quality/Sulfites%20vs.Sulfate.pdf
Chemistry 101 how chemicals get those suffixes: http://science.widener.edu/svb/pset/nomen_b.html
Proviso:
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
I was giving a class on dehydrators at the Sustainable Preparedness Expo in Spokane last fall when during the Q & A time, the topic turned to the use of sulfur for fruit. To an observer, it would appear that there was a divide in the group of people who dehydrate into those who use sulfur and those who would never use sulfur at all—what is sulfur or sulfur dioxide? What does it do for my dehydrated food?
If you squint really hard, you can almost see us in this video
When I give a class, I always do my best to present the information on dehydrating, why you would do it, and how it works. Inevitably, the topic wanders into best practices for storage methods. By design I put the sales pitch for the Excalibur dehydrator dead last because I want to make sure that people have their questions answered about what the process is and how it works before we start talking about the best product for the money. I answered the question about sulfur that day by saying that I knew that it was there to preserve the color—and that was the extent of my knowledge on that. But, how does it do that? Does it have any other purpose? Are there any downsides to sulfur?
I found a mention of the 16th element on the periodic table of elements in a homesteading book, “The sick room in all cases and preferably every room in the house, in case of small pox, diphtheria, typhoid and other virulent diseases, should be thoroughly disinfected by fumigation. This may be accomplished by formaldehyde gas or by the fumes of burning sulphur” (Padgett, p. 104). Before we discuss whether or not burnt sulphur smoke will cleanse anything, let us clear the air on the spelling, is it “sulphur” or “sulfur?” It depends on who you ask, the British spelling (i.e. centre, colour, favour, fibre, etc.) is the former and the American spelling (i.e. center, color, favor, fiber, etc.) is the later—so I will use the American spelling since most of my sources used that variant.
Sulfur, like most chemical elements is a yellowish-solid at room temperature, which is likely a good thing because it has much to do with all kinds of finished goods from dehydrated food to high fructose corn syrup and other “products and processes that include fabric dye, ink, water purification, wood preservation, and weed killers” (Ettlinger, p. 34). Other than its more industrious applications, sulfur is also used as an antimicrobial food preservative. “If everyone grew and cooked their own food, and everything we ate could be guaranteed fresh and safe, there would be no need for food additives” (Joachim & Schloss, p. 247).
Your alternative to eating foods containing preservatives is to visit the farmers’ market every day for fresh meat and produce. Also make your own cream, preserves, pickles, cheese, wine, potato chips, cereals, and olive oil, being sure to consume them before they go bad.
And welcome to the eighteenth century (Wolke, p. 375)
To that end, man has chiefly sought out to live better through chemistry with food additives. Lest the discussion slide down directly into a big corporate bashing session, people have been using salt, smoke, oil, fermentation and sugar to preserve food for millennia (Joachim & Schloss, p. 247). Whenever I present on dehydrating at an expo, I am covering a two pronged approach to denying bad bacteria (or any living thing) the ability to decompose your stored food: removing water and removing oxygen (further bonus points go to controlling temperature, excluding vermin and eliminating light). Since consumers do not buy very many food products that are vacuum sealed in opaque packages with oxygen absorbers (food marketing agencies say that we eat with our eyes), we have to ingest a myriad of chemicals to postpone the decomposition of our food. “Enter preservatives: chemicals added to prepared foods to extend their shelf lives—and the lives of us who eat them” (Wolke, p. 374). Sulfur happens to be a natural variety of such a preservative.
Here is a chart of some preservatives used in food (sulfur is listed under antimicrobial and antioxidant as sulfites):
So is sulfur bad for you? Not at all. “As the remarkable properties of vitamins have revealed themselves to investigators, so too have those of the various minerals in our food and water. The seven macrominerals—calcium, chloride, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium and sulfur—now share the spotlight with a longer list of trace minerals” (Fallon & Enig, p. 40).” Actually Sally Fallon Morell talks a lot about sulfur-containing proteins as assisting in a host of cellular functions to include maintaining the cellular wall and protecting the body from infection, blocking harmful effects of radiation and pollution as well as slowing down the aging process (pp. 43, & 436). As you see, sulfur can not only slow down the aging process of food, but of you as well!
(No, that is not Chaya)
Sulfur indeed is an interesting mineral “known biblically as brimstone, is perfectly odorless, but many of its compounds are evil smelling. Sulfur dioxide is the smell of burning sulfur” (Wolke, p. 28). But how does sulfur work to do all of this? What does sulfur have to do with dehydrated food? We will get into that in Part II in the next blog. I will give you a hint, it has to do with the third most abundant element in our universe and ever present in living things (H2O).
Wilson
Pro Deo et Patria
Works Cited:
Ettlinger, S. (2007). Twinkie, deconstructed, my journey to discover how the ingredients found in processed foods are grown, mined (yes, mined), and manipulated into what America eats. (First printing, March 2007 ed., Vol. 1). London: Hudson st Pr.
Fallon, S., & Enig, M. (2001). Nourishing traditions. (p. 40). Washington DC: Newtrends.
Joachim, D., & Schloss, A. (2008). The science of good food. (p. 239). Toronto: Robert Rose.
Padgett, C. (2001). Keeping hearth & home in old Ohio. (p. 109). Birmingham: Menasha Ridge Press.
Wolke, R. (2005). What Einstein told his cook 2: Further adventures in kitchen science. (p. 375). New York: W. W. Norton & Company.
Photo Credits:
Sulfur: Periodic Table of elements taken from the public domain: http://www.wpclipart.com/education/supplies/periodic_table_of_the_elements.png.html
Oxygen: Periodic Table of elements taken from the public domain: http://www.wpclipart.com/education/supplies/periodic_table_of_the_elements.png.html
Further Reading:
CDC article on “Sulphur Mustard” otherwise known as that horrendous substance, “Mustard Gas.” http://emergency.cdc.gov/agent/sulfurmustard/ This correctly outlawed chemical warfare toxin comes from the mustard’s seed:
A member of the brassica family, related to broccoli and cabbage, mustard is valued for its seed, which contains a compound called sinigrin. During grinding, enzymatic action liberates the pungent principle from the sugar molecule to which it is attached. Sulphur [sic] compounds and oils are also released. These compounds have a penetrating odor and an irritating effect on the skin and mucous membranes. (Morell, Enig, p. 104).
Sulfur compounds are also what accelerate both the decomposition of fish flesh making it smell putrid or the pleasant aromas from garlic or onions. “Much of the aromatics in roasted coffee beans come from mercaptans, which are sulfur compounds” (Joachim & Schloss, p. 239).
BHA cause for concern; an article citing research suggesting a link to cancer: http://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/ntp/roc/twelfth/profiles/ButylatedHydroxyanisole.pdf
Great article from Medopedia.com on “Petroleum, it’s what’s for breakfast” http://www.medpedia.com/news_analysis/98-Small-Bites/entries/79619-Petroleum-Itrsquos-Whatrsquos-For-Breakfast
Proviso:
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
While the East and Far East had supplied Europe with exotic spices and delicacies for millennia before the age of exploration, it was to be the Americas to grace the world with the gift of chocolate. “Curiously, this public airing of ideas in chocolate houses, so typical of the English Enlightenment, was never transferred to the North American Colonies. The leisured classes in Virginia took their chocolate at home” (Bardi, & Pietersen, p. 26). It was destined that Americans would like love chocolate, but not that they would mix it with politics—well, at least not directly.
Whether it was part of war rations, diplomatic efforts or even provisions for space travel, chocolate is an American essential that one could even call patriotic!
Even before they declared their independence from England, the American colonists were making chocolate. Chocolate was considered a staple, and it was made in America. The colonists imported only the raw materials, cocoa beans, from the West Indies. . . . After the Townshend Acts of 1767 levied taxes on shipments of tea, drinking chocolate became patriotic. (National Confectioners Association [NCA] Chocolate Council, para. 1&2)
The history of chocolate in America precedes the term “America” itself; the nation was still loose colonies, not all of which were English either. Since the Spanish were the first ones to taste of the sublime treat as part of their conquests, they would also be the first ones to import it into America.
The oldest reference to chocolate in North America is from a Spanish ship which arrived in St. Augustine, Florida, with crates of chocolate in 1641. By 1670, European chocolate was being sold in public houses in Boston. By 1682, cocoa was being exported from Jamaica to Boston to supply the first chocolate makers in the American colonies. Drinking chocolate was affordable to all classes of people in North America and was available in most coffee houses (Snyder, para. 3).
Even before the beginning, chocolate in America was here to stay. While the above quote uses the term, “classes,” this term is not one from our shores. Chocolate was made affordable to everyone by something generations of Americans had perfected, the industrial process. It was Dr. James Baker and an Irish immigrant named John Hannon who opened America’s first chocolate factory in 1765 in Massachusetts (NCA Chocolate Council, para. 1). The oldest running factory in the United States today that is still in operation producing chocolate from 1852 is of course, Ghirardelli. The history of the company is summed up nicely on their website:
During the California Gold rush in the mid-1800s, Domingo Ghirardelli shrewdly discovered that the exhausted miners in from the fields were starved for luxuries and needed something to spend their gold dust on. To capitalize on this opportunity, he stocked chocolate delicacies to ensure that they solicited his shop (Ghirardelli Chocolate Company, 2012).
However the biggest name in American chocolate known the world over is the ambitious son of Swiss Mennonite immigrants, Milton Snavely Hershey. Hershey started off life with a less than intact home and a largely absent father. After a failed apprenticeship with a printer, his mother directed him to an established Pennsylvanian confectioner. It was during this apprenticeship that Hershey’s true talents became known. Hershey would start several business ventures, some of which failed. He finally succeeded in his next to last one—not as a chocolatier but in making caramels. He discovered the use of milk and developed a process to make a superior caramel using milk instead of lesser quality ingredients.
Hershey’s perseverance paid off. He saw that his milk caramels were affordable and thus widely accepted; in his heart he knew that he could do the same with chocolate. In 1893 he visited the Columbian Exposition in Chicago and saw in the “Machinery Hall” the cutting edge of industrial machinery for producing all kinds of things. Among the vendors was the J.M. Lehmann Company of Dresden, Germany who was showcasing their new chocolate making machines. Milton Hershey purchased a machine and shipped it to Lancaster, PA. That is where he experimented with chocolate (mostly as coating) for his already successful caramel line (McMahon, p. 38).
“To most Americans, the name Hershey is probably synonymous with chocolate, and some people might assume that the candy takes its name from the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania, rather than the other way around” (Teubner, p. 19). It was there in Lancaster, PA that he discovered that he could indeed make the milk chocolate product more affordable by mass production and by running a well managed, people-centered company—even insisting on a one story floor plan for his new factory because of the ability to easily egress in case of a fire.
Milton Hershey eventually sold his caramel company for $1,000,000 and set out to relocate his new enterprise of producing chocolate. Since it was his Swiss ancestors who had successfully married chemistry, chocolate and milk, Hershey knew that he would need to be in a location with a plentiful milk supply and an adequate labor force. It was his ambition to produce a smaller product line in sufficient quantity, lowering the per-unit cost as volume increased—thus making milk chocolate affordable. While I am grateful for Mr. Hershey’s chocolate manufacturing prowess, the people who would live in the model town he was building would be grateful for his foresight and design implementations.
“Hershey, the Chocolate Town,” the dimensions of which made Cadbury and Rowntree’s achievements pale into matchbox scale by comparison. The several thousand employees would count on schools, libraries, churches, a hospital, a fire department, a park, a zoo, a golf course and other amenities. Moreover, alongside the milk chocolate and cocoa factories there were 8000 [sic] acres (3237 hectares) of Hershey-owned dairy farms (Bardi, & Pietersen, p. 30).
European chocolate at the time was typically bolder in flavor because its flavor profile consisted of a stronger cocoa butter flavor due to the higher content. However, Hershey was not a chemist and he found that what worked for carmels also worked for chocolate—milk chocolate that is. The creamy milk replaced the fat content of the cocoa butter while adding a slightly sour complexion. Since cocoa butter has a melting temperature similar to the temperature of the human hand, the new milk chocolate had a better solid composition.
Even with a new factory, the more growth came to meet the demand for chocolate. The price of sugar soared during WWI as the country rationed its European (beet) sugar supply. Hershey eventually bought a Cuban (cane) sugar plantation only to have the bottom of the sugar market fall out after the war. Still he persevered through, and even with the sugar market volatility and Prohibition turning beer companies into candy companies, Hershey realized that America was loyal to his brand of chocolate no matter what.
It might have been the instability of Milton Hershey’s upbringing, but some sources say that it was Kitty Hershey’s idea (Milton’s wife who was barren); in either case Milton Hershey would go on to establish the Milton Hershey School “to provide the boys with a stable home life, a sound education, and a trade . . . . From its beginnings, the school was designed to provide a homelike environment for the boys. They were grouped by age . . . [and] meals were served ‘family style.’” (McMahon, p. 116-117).
In 1918, three years after the death of his wife, Milton Hershey placed the bulk of his fortune, $60 million worth of Hershey Chocolate Company stock, in trust for his school. The School Trust was and still is managed by the Hershey Trust Company, which . . . . ensures the School’s continued ability to provide a full education and a secure, nurturing environment for all attending students. Only income and dividends from the School Trust’s investments may be used for the benefit of the school. During the 1920s, the school added an agricultural program to its curriculum. Older boys lived in homes connected to farms where they raised turkeys, pigs, ducks and cows (McMahon, p. 117).
The Hershey Chocolate Company would have other trouble with the depression, WWII, the restructuring of the company and eventually the death of Milton Hershey himself—the indelible mark of what chocolate would mean to America is certain to include a Hershey embossment.
The history of chocolate in America is indeed a sweet one. With a big “thank you” going out to many entrepreneurs, chemists and adventurers throughout world hisotry who helped advance the discovery of chocolate.
Wilson
Pro Deo et Patria
Photo Credits:
Chocolate in America (World Map with US highlighted in green) by Cleavlander added to the Public Domain
Hot Chocolate Heart by Kevin Tuck and can be found at: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/muJqBly/Hot+chocolate+heart
Ghirardelli (Factory) by Ghirardelli Chocolate Company taken from http://www.ghirardelli.com/about-ghirardelli
Hershey Chocolate by Hershey Chocolate Company taken from https://www.thehersheycompany.com/contact-us.aspx
Hershey (Hershey-Great-Americans-Series) by USPS taken from http://www.beyondtheperf.com/sites/default/files/slideshow/images/Hershey-Great-Americans-Series.jpg
Works Cited:
Bardi. , & Pietersen, (2006). The golden book of chocolate. (p. 26). Florence: McRae Books.
Ghirardelli Chocolate Company and Parrot. (2012). About ghirardelli. Retrieved from http://www.ghirardelli.com/about-ghirardelli
McMahon Jr., J. (1998). Built on chocolate: The story of the hershey chocolate company. (p. 38). Los Angeles: General Publishing Group.
Snyder, R. (2010, August). Chocolate as america. Retrieved from http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2011/08/chocolate-as-america/
Teubner, C. (1997). The chocolate bible. (p. 10). New York: Penguin Studio.
The National Confectioners Association Chocolate Council. (2010, December 23). The story of chocolate, Americans.. Retrieved from http://www.thestoryofchocolate.com
Proviso:
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
When I used to travel back and forth across the ocean into hostile places in the world, I thought that if I were ever captured that the enemy could try to tempt me with women, money or power and I would not succumb; however Peanut M&M’s® are a whole other level of appeal. It seems that the enchanting power of chocolate goes far beyond just what organic chemistry can tell us.
The best part of a chocolate chip cookie is—of course—the chocolate which is loved the world over. I cannot remember how old I was when I realized that Theobroma cacao plants do not grow anywhere near Switzerland, so how did the Swiss Miss® get to be so associated with this imported tropical plant product?
For centuries the Old World knew nothing of cacao bushes and trees, whose broad crowns swayed beneath the protective canopy of taller trees. Cacao bushes grew in the primeval forest, producing blossom, leaf, and fruit simultaneously. The eighteenth-century Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus named this evergreen tree of Paradise Theobroma, meaning “food of the gods.” In legends handed down over thousands of years the native peoples of Central and South America described how the gods alone were worthy of enjoying its fruits (Teubner, 1997).
This food is surrounded by intrigue! “The Latin definition [Theobroma cacao] was provided in 1753 by the great Swedish scientist Linnaeus, himself a chocolate-lover. The binomial system he invented for the classification of all living things replaced unwieldy descriptive Latin sentences” (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006). While Linnaeus may have been the first to scientifically name the plant, he was not the first to discover it—not even close. The distinct honor of giving the world the gift of chocolate is believed to be first attributed to the Olmec peoples of modern day Mexico (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006) likely centuries before the Spanish Conquistadors arrived. Just as Christianity was taking root in Europe, the cacao bean was traded in the markets of Mayan princes as both currency and food (Teubner, 1997).
Since most of Europe was looking towards the East (often the Far East) for spices and exotic delicacies, the wonder of chocolate was something original to the New World in the West. The 30-40 seeds in the cacao pod will not yield quite as fine of a product until the fruit has been allowed to rot and ferment for about five to ten days. The beans were then washed in water and rubbed clean before placing them in the sun to roast to fully dry them and, in the absence of sorbic acid, to prevent mold from forming on these rich beans. This fermentation, cleansing and roasting enhanced the flavor to a milder and tamer version of the raw product.
The next step according to tradition and Archeological evidence seems to point to the grinding of the beans into a powder, and then the consumption of the treat in liquefied drink form. The elite crust of the New World would often employ slaves to shake the cold water and cacao xocolatl (“xoco” means bitter, and “atl” means water) mixture until it became frothy by using special tools designed for making the drink. “Since cacao beans are rich in fat [~55%], simply to mix the ground cacao with water would soon have lead to separation, with the cacao gradually settling in a unpleasant sludgy sediment at the bottom of the cup (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006).”
From there it was up to the imagination and purchasing power of the connoisseur of how the drink would be flavored. According to an account by Bernial Diaz del Castillo the Montezuma nobles and warriors were known to drink the xocoatl several times a day from gold flasks. They were known to spice the drink with native vanilla, wild honey, pita juice or even chilis. It was the Spanish who took advantage of their international trade and started drinking it hot mixed with sugar (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006). This was certainly the first revision of modern day hot chocolate (genius!).
From there the history of chocolate recipes takes a religious, political and state secret bend.
The Spaniards, for whom drunkenness was a sin, developed a liking for this new drink. Since the Church recognized it as a beverage rather than a food, it could be consumed even during periods of fasting. . . . Still the drink continued to be made with water. The countries in which the cacao bush was indigenous all belonged to the Spanish and Portuguese crown, and so for roughly a century cocoa remained a Spanish drink and a secret (Teubner, 1997).
Eventually Italian explorers discovered the beans that the Spanish and Portuguese were not spilling and trade routes developed from Italy north through the Alps (evidently how Swiss Miss® got in on the secret). Britain would capture Jamaica from the Spanish to start their cacao trade venture (Teubner, 1997). The delight of chocolate was now in Europe through trade and royal marriages, but would still stay within the hands of the elite largely because the method to produce chocolate had not changed very much and was labor-intensive. Later, the Brits mechanized the process with the first chocolate factory by Fry and Sons of Bristol; the production was further developed by the French who used hydraulics. Not to be outdone, the Prince of Lippe opened eight factories in Munich alone (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006). The Prince of Lippe had served as an officer with the Portuguese military and simply could not abide without chocolate.
The industrialization of the production process meant that the supply had to be sufficient and reliable. Once the secret only of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns, the other colonial powers were applying known agricultural techniques to produce the cacao cheaper and in higher quantity to meet the demand. Chocolate was now international and it had the power to shape trade and to make fortunes. All of this power comes with a large responsibility and the three biggest purveyors of this sublime dessert were not without a moral compass.
By curious coincidence the Frys [who supplied the British Navy with chocolate], the Cadburys [who personally supplied chocolate to the Queen] and the prominent Rowntree family near York were all Quakers who maintained a social conscience even as their fortunes accrued. They built housing and communal facilities such as libraries for their workers, and boycotted cacao from colonial plantations in which conditions of near slavery prevailed. By the same token, they also avoided industrial malpractice (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006).
Aside: Nowadays it is up to the consumer to vote with their wallet on where and how chocolate is produced. Products like Frontier Brand Organic Hot Cocoa are produced in countries that pay workers fairly and do not resort to child labor or indentured servitude to artificially hold prices down.
The biggest advance in chocolate recipes was by far the development of chemistry. Usually, we do not think of chemistry as being a part of the kitchen milieu, but recall that something as routine as baking a loaf of bread is indeed a controlled chemistry experiment. Between the science of chemistry, ingenuity, and necessity, the practice developed to mix the fruit of Theobromma cacao and the staple of the Alps, the liquid of life—milk. “In 1867 a Swiss chemist by the name of Henri Nestlé discovered a method of making powdered milk by evaporation. This was fully a pivotal event. . . . The outcome was the world’s first milk chocolate bar (Bardi & Pietersen, 2006).” Up until now, the density of the chocolate brick was dependent upon the amount of cocoa butter in the product. The credit for bringing chocolate from a gritty crumbly mass to a silky substance which could be poured (instead of beaten) into a mold and then to candy bar form goes to the Swiss who made the names Lindt, Nestlé and Toblerone household words.
In the next blog (Part 2 of 3), we will discuss how chocolate is made and in Part 3 of 3 we talk about chocolate in America!
Wilson
Pro Deo et Patria
Photo Credits:
Cacao Pods (Cocoa Fruits) by Michael & Christa Richert and can be found at: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mDJMTie/cocoa+fruits
Chocolate (Cacao just add milk) by A K Rehse and can be found at: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mfmoQNm/cacao-just+add+milk
Hot Chocolate Heart by Kevin Tuck and can be found at: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/muJqBly/Hot+chocolate+heart
Frontier Organic Hot Cocoa used with permission from Frontier
Chocolate Bar by Sanja Gjenero can be found at: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/mgylB4G/chocolate
Works Cited:
Teubner, C. (1997). The chocolate bible. (p. 6). New York: Penguin Studio.
Bardi. , & Pietersen, (2006). The golden book of chocolate. (p. 13). Florence: McRae Books.
Ibid, p. 18.
Teubner, C. (1997). The chocolate bible. (p. 7). New York: Penguin Studio.
Bardi. , & Pietersen, (2006). The golden book of chocolate. (p. 20-21). Florence: McRae Books.
Ibid, p. 23.
Teubner, C. (1997). The chocolate bible. (p. 10). New York: Penguin Studio.
Ibid, p. 10-11.
Bardi. , & Pietersen, (2006). The golden book of chocolate. (p. 25-26). Florence: McRae Books.
Ibid, p. 27.
Ibid, p. 29.
Proviso:
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
Leaven comes from the Latin word Levare to raise (M-W, 2012) and all that makes great sense, but how did Eben Horsford help? Horsford was a chemist and he knew that carbonates release carbon dioxide when they come in contact with an acid, any acid: sour milk, vinegar or even hydrochloric acid (which is not recommended). Horsford was out to find a yeast replacement that was more stable acid that could be shipped with the baking soda (sodium bicarbonate).
After years of experimenting with hundreds of acid sources in Cambridge and Germany, Horsford found that by saturating animal bones from nearby slaughterhouses in sulfuric acid, he could manufacture a crude form of monocalcium phosphate that could be dried into a powder and mixed with sodium bicarbonate to create a dry chemical leavening that fizzed when wet (Ettlinger, 2007).
baking-powder, non-GMO and aluminum free
“After 1854, his main preoccupation was to discover a substitute for yeast in baking bread. At the same time, Horsford entered into a business partnership with George Wilson, a former textile manufacturer, to establish the Rumford Chemical Works” (American Chemical Society, 2007). Eventually, Monocalcium Phosphate was the acid of choice and is still used to this day, although manufactured differently—just check out the Frontier’s ingredient list on this baking powder.
The story of the Rumford® is interesting:
The 1885 discovery of a sodium acid phosphate that gave off gas in response to heat, not water, led to its inclusion in the mix for a “secondary action”—the action that gave us the term “double acting.” Now, when Horsford mixed it with sodium bicarbonate, he had the first phosphate-based, stable, reliable, affordable baking powder, which he packaged as Rumford®, in honor of the great count, whose beribboned, ponytailed cameo still graces the label on cans today. . . . Rumford [sic] has the oldest consumer product label found in grocery stores, dating back to the 1860’s (Ettlinger, 2007).
Wow, that is quite a history for something you probably never gave much thought to as it was added to your buttermilk biscuits.
What is the difference between baking soda and baking powder? “Baking powder is baking soda with the acids already mixed in. That’s why baking soda is generally used in recipes that include acidic ingredients, whereas baking powder is used in recipes that contain no acidic ingredients” (Joachim & Schloss, 2008). Baking soda is baking powder minus the acids—but it turns out that the acids make all of the difference. Depending on the type of acid mixed in, the chemical leavener can be “tuned” to produce the second rising effect a certain temperature. Likewise, recipes that call for baking soda are likely doing so to counteract an acidic ingredient in the mixture (see chart below).
How do we get this great stuff of baker’s convenience? Rocks. Yep, it is mined from the earth. Starting off deep under Green River, Wyoming, Sodium Bicarbonate starts off as being extracted as a raw mineral called “trona” and it will produce sodium carbonate (later one more carbon atom is added to make bicarbonate). As for the Monocalcium part one needs lime, a lot of it in the food grade form—it also is mined. Lastly comes the Phosphate of Monocalcium Phosphate and it too is mined out West by mining companies such as Monsanto around Soda Springs, Idaho. The refining process is something of a wonder, and although you can find low concentrations of Phosphoric acid in a Coca-Cola® or high concentrations in naval jelly (rust stripper), phosphorus acid in its pure form will catch on fire if it contacts with oxygen—extreme care must be taken to transport it. Frontier’s Brand (which we sell in bulk) adds non-GMO cornstarch to prevent caking and you have something that we eat that (chemically) lies between glass and tracer bullets.
Steve Ettlinger in his fascinating book, Twinkie, Deconstructed takes you to all the places where those items are mined from the earth and then onto the southside of Chicago to a company like Innophos where they are all reacted and assembled to produce baking powder. What is interesting is that the applications for any one of those chemicals may be anything from Roundup®, to anti-acid tablets, to meth, to concrete, to paint or even paper—but the application that we are investigating is the stuff that makes a low-protein flour rise so well into birthday cake.
The next time you pull out that mason jar of baking powder from the cupboard, think of the history behind such an unassuming ingredient. While you are at it, make a Baking Certificate from Clabber Girl® (parent company to Rumford®) for any little helper in the kitchen there to do any on-the-spot taste testing.
“leaven.” Merriam-Webster.com. 2012. http://www.merriam-webster.com (17 Dec 2012).
Ettlinger, S. (2007). Twinkie, deconstructed, my journey to discover how the ingredients found in processed foods are grown, mined (yes, mined), and manipulated into what a. (First printing,March 2007 ed., Vol. 1, p. 137). London: Hudson st Pr.
American Chemical Society. (2007). Eben horsford. Retrieved from http://acswebcontent.acs.org/landmarks/bakingpowder/horsford.html
Ettlinger, S. (2007). Twinkie, deconstructed, my journey to discover how the ingredients found in processed foods are grown, mined (yes, mined), and manipulated into what a. (First printing,March 2007 ed., Vol. 1, p. 138-9). London: Hudson st Pr.
Joachim, D., & Schloss, A. (2008). The science of good food. (p. 122). Toronto: Robert Rose.
Photo Credits:
Biscotti by Nathalie Dulex: http://www.rgbstock.com/photo/msDa65C/Biscotti
Rumford® Baking Powder from Clabber Girl®: http://www.clabbergirl.com/consumer/products/rumford/
Nothing in this blog constitutes medical advice. You should consult your own physician before making any dietary changes. Statements in this blog may or may not be congruent with current USDA or FDA guidance.
Hydration
Original slide can be found at: http://newtrendspublishing.com/ppts/OilingofAmerica.ppt
