Science Topics – Food Science

Week 3

Day What we’re doing in class What we’re doing outside of class What’s the learning target?

Chemical Leaveners Research on Ingredients

Monday
October

- Baking Soda & Baking Powder

18th

The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie

Continue the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie
October
Tuesday

19th

Finish the Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie Bring in a 2L bottle

Wednesday
October
20th

Yeast Fermentation Read “How Bread Works”

Thursday
October
21st

Making Ginger Ale

Finish Ginger Ale

October
Friday

22nd

Begin Making Bread

 Name__________________________
Science Topics – Food Science

The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie

In the space below, I would like you to describe your ideal chocolate chip cookie (the most PERFECT
chocolate chip cookie you have ever tasted). You have been provided with some categories to help
you organize your description, but I encourage you to go beyond these. Please give a very SPECIFIC
& DETAILED DESCRIPTION.

The Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookie 1st Batch Cookie

Thickness

Diameter

Color

Texture

Moistness/
Crunchiness

Salty vs. Sweet

Chocolate Chip
Density

Aroma

Additional
Notes
Using what you already know as well as research tools (cookbooks, internet, etc.), describe the
purpose of each of the ingredients below.

Ingredient Purpose

Granulated Sugar

Brown Sugar

Eggs

Butter

Flour

Salt

Baking Soda

Vanilla
Compare our original recipe (1st batch) to your ultimate cookie.

1. What do you believe needs to be modified in order for the recipe to produce the ultimate
cookie? Explain why.

2. Write out your new recipe for the ultimate chocolate chip cookie. This should be supported
by your research of what each ingredient does in the recipe.

Ingredient Amount Ingredient Amount

Granulated Sugar Flour
Brown Sugar Salt
Eggs Baking Soda
Butter Vanilla
 Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe
• ½ cup sugar
• ½ cup packed brown sugar
• ½ cup butter, softened
• 2 large eggs, beaten
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cups semisweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Mix sugar, brown sugar, butter, vanilla and eggs in a
large bowl by hand. Stir in flour, baking soda, and salt.

Stir in chocolate chips by hand. You'll need to use a sturdy wooden spoon for this
and a bit of muscle. Keep stirring the chocolate chips into the dough until they are
evenly dispersed.

Drop dough by rounded tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart onto ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until light brown.

Baking Powder and Baking Soda - Joyofbaking.com http://www.joyofbaking.com/printpages/bakingsodaprint.html

Baking Powder and Baking Soda

(Bicarbonate)
Both baking powder and baking soda are chemical leavening agents that cause batters to
rise when baked. The leavener enlarges the bubbles which are already present in the
batter produced through creaming of ingredients. When a recipe contains baking powder
and baking soda, the baking powder does most of the leavening. The baking soda is
added to neutralize the acids in the recipe plus to add tenderness and some leavening.
When using baking powder or baking soda in a recipe, make sure to sift or whisk with the
other dry ingredients before adding to the batter to ensure uniformity. Otherwise the
baked good can have large holes.

Baking powder consists of baking soda, one or more acid salts (cream of tartar and
sodium aluminum sulfate) plus cornstarch to absorb any moisture so a reaction does not
take place until a liquid is added to the batter. Most baking powder used today is double-
acting which means it reacts to liquid and heat and happens in two stages. The first
reaction takes place when you add the baking powder to the batter and it is moistened.
One of the acid salts reacts with the baking soda and produces carbon dioxide gas. The
second reaction takes place when the batter is placed in the oven. The gas cells expand Baking Soda and Baking Powder
causing the batter to rise. Because of the two stages, baking of the batter can be delayed
for about 15-20 minutes without it losing its leavening power. 1 teaspoon = 5 grams

Too much baking powder can cause the batter to be bitter tasting. It can also cause the
batter to rise rapidly and then collapse. (i.e. The air bubbles in the batter grow too large
and break causing the batter to fall.) Cakes will have a coarse, fragile crumb with a fallen
center. Too little baking powder results in a tough cake that has poor volume and a
compact crumb.
To test baking powder's effectiveness: mix 1 teaspoon
(5 grams) baking powder with 1/2 cup (120 ml) hot
water and the mixture should bubble immediately. Store
in a cool dry place and it should be replaced every 6-12
months.

Baking soda, also known as sodium bicarbonate or bicarbonate of soda (alkali) is about
four times as strong as baking powder. It is used in recipes that contain an acidic
ingredient (e.g. vinegar, citrus juice, sour cream, yogurt, buttermilk, chocolate, cocoa (not
Dutch-processed), honey, molasses (also brown sugar), fruits and maple syrup). Baking
soda starts to react and release carbon dioxide gas as soon as it is added to the batter
and moistened. Make sure to bake the batter immediately.
Baking soda has an indefinite shelf life if stored in a sealed container in a cool dry place.
Too much baking soda will result in a soapy taste with a coarse, open crumb. Baking
soda causes reddening of cocoa powder when baked, hence the name Devil's Food
Cake.
To test baking soda's effectiveness: mix 1/4 teaspoon
baking soda with 2 teaspoons of vinegar and the mixture
should bubble immediately.
Note: The general rule of thumb for amount of baking
powder in recipes: 1 to 2 teaspoons (5-10 grams) of
baking powder leavens 1 cup (140 grams) of flour. The
amount will depend on the ingredients and how they are
mixed.
Substitution for 1 teaspoon commercial baking
powder: 1/4 teaspoon (1.25 grams) baking soda, 1/2
teaspoon cream of tartar plus 1/4 teaspoon of
cornstarch or 1/4 teaspoon (1.25 grams) baking soda
plus 1/2 cup (120 ml) of an acidic ingredient (buttermilk,
sour milk or yogurt). Since homemade baking powder
immediately releases its carbon dioxide gas when it is
added and then moistened by the batter, it is important
to bake the batter right away.

Note: Cream of Tartar - Lining the inside of wine

caskets after fermentation is a white sediment (tartaric
acid). This sediment is removed, purified and then
ground to produce a fine white powder which we call
cream of tartar. Cream of tartar can be found in the
spice section of most grocery stores and should be
stored in a cool dry place.

1 of 1 10/17/2010 7:11 PM
 Old-Fashioned, Home-Made Ginger Ale:

Harnessing the Biochemical Pathways of Glycosis and Fermentation to Tickle Your Taste
Buds

Fermentation has been used by mankind for thousands of years for raising bread, making sauerkraut, and
sparkling apple cider. The product of fermentation of sugar by yeast (a living organism) causes bread to
rise and gives effervescent drinks their bubbles. This action of yeast on sugar is used to ‘carbonate’
beverages, as in the addition of bubbles to commercially prepared ginger ale.

We will set up a fermentation in a closed system and capture the generated gas produced by the yeast to
produce our home made ginger ale. Note that the lemon juice called for in step five is optional. Cheers!

Pre-Lab Questions:

1. What compound is used in the physiological processes of the yeast fungus?

2. What does the yeast use this compound for?

3. What is the by-product of this process?

4. What might be the result of immediately chilling our home-brew, rather than letting it sit at room
temperature? What would be the result of placing our bottles in a warmer than room
temperature environment?
Materials
• One 2L plastic soda bottle
• Funnel
• Grater
• Sucrose (sugar)
• Yeast
• Ginger root
• Water
• OPTIONAL: lemon juice

Procedure
1. Working in pairs, obtain one 2L plastic soda bottle. Wash it out with soap and water. Be sure that
it is completely cleaned out and no soap remains.

2. Mass approximately 200 g of sucrose, and using a clean funnel, add the sucrose to the bottle.

3. Mass 1.0 g of yeast. Add this to the bottle, also using the funnel. Give the bottle a gentle shake
to distribute the yeast throughout the sucrose.

4. Using the small teeth end of the grater, grate up the ginger root until you have approximately 60
g.

5. Mass approximately 60 g of freshly grated ginger root, and again using the funnel, add it to your
bottle.

6. OPTIONAL: Measure anywhere from 10-20 mL of lemon juice, and add it to your bottle.

7. Fill the bottle with cold, clean water, to approximately 3 inches from the top of the bottle.

8. While maintaining a gentle pressure, have your partner tightly cap the bottle.

9. Write your names on the bottle with permanent marker, and place the bottles in the area
designated by your instructor.

10. Sit back and wait (3-4 days) for the yeast to do its thing. After this time, they will be placed in
the refrigerator, and when we open them up, we’ll be able to enjoy a cold, crisp glass of ginger ale.
 How Bread Works
by Marshall Brain
TLC Cooking

Introduction
You probably eat bread every day. You may even know how to make your own bread. But
have you ever thought about bread as a technology?
Why do we have bread? That's a great place to start. We could just as easily munch on dry
wheat kernels instead. Or we could grind the wheat into flour, mix the flour with water and eat it as
a wet mush. Or we could pour the mush out on a table and dry the mush into thin brittle sheets.
But we don't do that, mainly because bread tastes a lot better, and it also works a lot better for
sandwiches. Bread is moist (not wet like mush or dry like dried mush), soft (unlike wheat kernels),
spongy and delicious. Bread is a bio-chemical technology for turning wheat flour into something
tasty!
If you pick up a slice of bread and examine it closely, you can see that it is full of air holes.
This makes it spongy and soft. You will also see that bread is moist. If you let a slice of bread sit out
on the counter for a day, you will realize just how moist fresh bread is!
Bakers use two simple facts of life to create soft, spongy, moist bread:
• First, they use the fact that yeast (a single-cell fungi) will eat sugar, and from the sugar
create alcohol and carbon dioxide gas as waste products. The carbon dioxide gas created
by yeast is what gives bread its airy texture, and the alcohol, which burns off during
baking, leaves behind an important component of bread's flavor.
• Second, wheat flour, if mixed with water and kneaded,
kneaded becomes very elastic. The flour-and-
water mixture in bread becomes stretchy like a balloon because of a protein in wheat known
as gluten.
gluten Gluten gives bread dough the ability to capture the carbon dioxide produced by
yeast in tiny flour balloons.
We will perform a few experiments to better understand how bread works.
Investigation 1

One thing you'll learn in this experiment is that yeast does, in fact, produce carbon dioxide gas. To
perform this experiment, you will need:

• One large Ziploc

Ziploc-type freezer bag - The plastic bag should be able to hold between a couple
of quarts to a gallon of water. (Usually the box that the bag comes in will state the bag's
capacity.)
• One envelope of "rapid-
"rapid-rise, active, dry yeast" from the grocery store
• 1 cup
cup (.24 L) lukewarm water (about 100 degrees F, 37.7 C) - When you stick your finger
in it, it should feel neither warm nor cold.
• 1/2 cup (.12 L) sugar
Let's get started!
1 Take the 1 cup lukewarm water and mix the package of yeast into it. When you pour the
yeast granules into the water, you allow the yeast cells to become active.
2 Mix in your sugar.
3 Pour the entire water-sugar-yeast mixture into the plastic bag. Push as much air as possible
out of the bag and then seal it tightly shut.
4 Put the plastic bag in a warmish place. Come back in about an hour.
When you come back to your experiment, you'll notice that yeast cells do a really good job of
creating carbon dioxide. You will see that the bag has partially filled with the gas, and that the liquid
is full of carbon dioxide bubbles that the yeast has produced. A yeast cell can process approximately
its own weight of glucose (sugar) per hour, and from the glucose (C6H12O6), yeast produces
carbon dioxide (CO2) and ethanol (C2H5OH) (two molecules of each). Although yeast cells are
small, there are billions of them available from the packet of yeast. You should be able to see a
noticeable amount of puffiness in your bag after two hours. You may want to go to bed and let the
bag sit overnight -- it will get quite puffy if you let it.
Investigation 2

Now, let's see what happens if we change things around a bit.

1 Reproduce experiment 1, but this time replace the 1/2 cup sugar with a 1/2 cup (.12 L) white
flour.
2 Mix the flour thoroughly into the water so there are no lumps. (This is most easily done by
mixing the dry flour with a small amount of water to create a paste, then adding a little
more water, and so on until all the water has been added.)
3 Seal the flour-water-yeast mixture in a plastic bag as you did in Experiment 1 and come back
in an hour or two.
What you will notice is that this mixture produces carbon dioxide, but somewhat more slowly. (If
you run Experiments 1 and 2 simultaneously, you will be able to see the different rates more
easily.). Where did the sugar for the yeast to eat come from in Experiment 2? We didn't put any
sugar at all in this bag, right? It turns out that, in the mixture of flour and yeast, there are enzymes
that turn the starch in the flour into maltose,
maltose another sugar. The yeast uses this sugar in the same
way it uses the glucose in white sugar. It takes time for the enzymes to convert starch to maltose,
and that's what causes the delay. However, the yeast is able to produce some carbon dioxide, and
that's how you know the enzymes are working. In a loaf of bread, it is this flour-to-maltose
reaction that actually drives the expansion of the bread for the most part -- the small amount of
sugar you mix into the bread dough is used up by the yeast fairly quickly.
Investigation 3

From the previous two experiments, you can see that yeast cells produce plenty of carbon dioxide.
The reason why bread bakes up so airy is because the bread dough captures and holds the carbon
dioxide that the yeast produces. It does this because flour contains a protein called gluten.
gluten To see
gluten in action, try this experiment:
1 Mix 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup flour in a bowl.
2 Stir the mixture with a fork to wet the flour. What you will have initially is a lumpy, grainy
mass.
3 Lift the fork out of this mass. You will find that the mass is quite watery.
4 Now keep stirring for about five minutes (set a timer for five minutes -- it is a long time
when you are stirring!). Over time, the batter will smooth out.
5 Keep stirring, and a funny thing will happen when you lift the fork slowly from the bowl:
The batter will have become quite elastic! Not elastic like a rubber band, but elastic enough
that you'll be able to pull away up to a 1-inch-long thread of batter with the fork. This
mixture is now extremely smooth and not watery at all.
That elasticity is caused by the gluten in the flour. Gluten is a protein that forms thread-like chains.
By stirring (or more commonly, kneading)
kneading the dough, the gluten develops into long, interlaced
chains. Kneading is better for developing these chains because kneading is gentle -- it does not cut
the chains up. When you knead bread dough, you are creating gluten chains. If you were to skip the
kneading part, your bread would not rise very well -- all the carbon dioxide in the yeast would
bubble up to the top and escape, rather than being captured inside the elastic dough.
Investigation – Let's Bake

By now, you understand a whole lot more about the technology of bread!
• You know that the bubbles in the dough come from yeast, and that enzymes convert flour's
starch into maltose, which the yeast eats to produce the carbon dioxide.
• You know that the gluten in the flour helps the dough capture the carbon dioxide and hold
it in mini gluten-balloons.
• You also know that the yeast produces alcohol. The combination of the maltose and alcohol
explains why bread tastes a lot better than flour mush!
So, let's bake some bread and try it out! To make one loaf, you'll need:
• 3-1/4 cups (.78 L) flour, separated into two 1-1/2 cup (.36 L) and one 1/4 cup (.06 L)
batches
• 1 cup (.24 L) lukewarm milk
• 1/8 cup (.02 L) water
• 1 tablespoon (15 mL) sugar
• 1 envelope active dry yeast
• 1 teaspoon (5 mL) salt
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 loaf pan (or cookie sheet)
• An oven
Here we go...
1 Dissolve the yeast in the water and let it sit for 10 minutes or so to "come back to life" (you
will likely notice it foaming slightly -- that is a good sign -- it tells you your yeast is okay).
2 In a big bowl, combine the water/yeast, milk, sugar, salt and oil.
3 Add 1-1/2 cups of your flour and start stirring until well blended.
4 Stir in the other 1-1/2 cups of flour. At this point, the dough will be pretty stiff but still
sticky.
Mixing the ingredients

Now, you need to knead the dough for about 10 minutes. Start by washing your hands.

Since the dough is sticky, dust the top of it with about 2 teaspoons of the flour you saved.
Get your hands into the bowl with the ball of dough and squeeze it, push it, mash it, etc. This is
kneading, and it's hard work, by the way, but you have to do it to develop the gluten. Stick with it
for 10 minutes (set a timer if you need to).
When the dough gets sticky again, dust it with some more flour. You may have to use more
than the original 3-1/4 cups flour, and that's okay. Your hands may get covered with sticky dough.
"Wash them" with dry flour. That is, when your hands get sticky, dust them and the top of the
dough ball with flour.
Over time, an amazing thing will happen -- the dough ball will stop being sticky, and will become
satiny smooth and elastic.
Now, you need to let the dough rise in a warm place for between 60 and 90 minutes. The easiest
way to create a warmish place is to turn your oven on to its lowest setting possible (around 150 F/
65.5 C), let it heat up to that temperature, then turn the oven off and open the door of the oven
wide for about 30 seconds to dissipate some of the heat. Rub the 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil onto
the top of the ball of dough to prevent drying, and then stick your bowl of dough inside the oven
and close the door. Traditionally, you cover the bowl with a towel, also to keep the dough from
drying out. Look in periodically.
After about 60 to 75 minutes, your dough ball will have nearly doubled in size. The gluten and the
carbon dioxide that the yeast produced worked!

"Punch the dough down," which is baking-speak for pushing all the air out of the dough with your
hands.

1 Take the dough out of the bowl. If you have a loaf pan, grease the pan, shape the dough into
a small loafish shape and put it in the pan. If you are using a cookie sheet, either shape the
dough into a ball or a loafish shape, and place it on the sheet.
2 Put the dough back in the warm oven and let it rise again for anther 60 to 90 minutes -- it
will double in size again.

Letting the dough rise a second time in the pan

When your dough has again doubled in size, turn the oven on to 350 degrees F (176 C), and cook
the bread for about 45 minutes. You will know it is done when the loaf has a nice golden-
golden-brown
color and when you tap on the top crust, the tap sounds hollow.
hollow

Take your loaf of bread out of the oven -- don't forget to turn off the oven! Let the bread cool for
a minute so you can get it out of the pan. Then cut off a slice and enjoy the miracle of fresh-baked
deliciousness! You are tasting the great biological and chemical masterpiece called bread!
bread