bicarb or baking powder

frankie1star

I have a recipe requiring bicarb, but the thing is I can taste it once cooked. I replaced the plain flour in the recipe for sr flour and added a t spoon of baking powder, all worked well, and the cake was less dense than if made with bicarb and p flour. Is this a general thing you can do. I realise there are chemical reactions taking place, but cant remember the rule of thumb for this particular issue

freyasmum

Well they both contain sodium bicarbonate, but in different amounts.

Bicarb can taste soapy if you don't neutralise it properly with an acid like yogurt/milk/chocolate (yes, really)/loads of other things. The alkaline (bicarb) and acid react and create gas which shows as the bubbles you see on top of recipes. Things with bicarb in generally need to be baked asap or they may not rise as well as they should.

Baking powder contains bicarb that has already been neutralised with cream of tartare. It's mostly cornflour though. 'Products' containing BP usually have slightly longer cooking times they can also take a little bit of standing as the leavening agents tend to be activated by heat rather than purely chemically.

I wouldn't have said you'd need to add baking powder if you used SR flour btw since it already contains the leavening agent. Whenever I've swapped BP in for bicarb, it's been fine (use a little more though, because the raising is diluted) but if you swap in bicarb for BP you need to neutralise it - if you know what I mean? And make sure that you get it straight in the oven.


Sorry if I haven't made much sense

frankie1star

that does makes sense as the recipe has milk in it, but I used skimmed milk do you think this is enough of a neutralising agent?

freyasmum

frankie1star wrote: »

that does makes sense as the recipe has milk in it, but I used skimmed milk do you think this is enough of a neutralising agent?

Well the difference between whole and skimmed is the reduced fat content, and I can't see that making much of a difference to the acidity. Or enough to make any discernible difference in any case.


Skim, for reference, is actually higher in protein than whole