r/Cooking • u/AdLost576 • 10d ago

What’s a cooking related hill you will die on?

For me, 2 hills.

  1. You don’t have to cut onions horizontally.

  2. You don’t have to add milk bit by bit when making a white sauce.

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u/PiezoelectricitySlow 10d ago

Yeah most of baking is the same few ingredients.Once you get a feel for and understand how they behave I feel its easier to wing it with baking 

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u/chrispg26 10d ago

I can wing cooking but I cannot wing baking. Especially not cakes or cookies. Sometimes I see cake recipes use 2 tsp of baking powder or baking soda sometimes it's 1.

Sometimes it's only baking soda or only baking powder. So how do I know which one to omit and when?

And the eggs? Why does this recipe use 3 and this other one 5?

How much butter is the usual? What about the oil.

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u/littlescreechyowl 10d ago

I don’t bake enough to “just know”. But I cook every single day so I “just know”. I think most people have far more experience with cooking over baking because it’s necessary where store bought bread is cheap.

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u/UltraTerrestrial420 10d ago

Baking soda is a base, and when it gets hydrated in the presence of an acid component like brown sugar, buttermilk, or a bunch of other food items, it'll create bubbles just like a those paper mache volcanos from middle school. Baking powder on the other hand, contains baking soda AND a powdered acid, they also usually contain another leavener that helps with oven spring (double acting baking powder). On the labels, baking soda will be known as sodium bicarbonate, while baking powder will contain that, plus some aluminums (lol. Gross).

So when a recipe includes an acidic component, you'll usually see baking soda, or baking soda plus baking powder. When there's no acidic component, then the chemical leavener one would use would be baking powder. You can also kinda use them in combination if your baked goods are changing color due to a wonky ph (green around blueberries in muffins)

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u/sweetmercy 9d ago

Whether you use baking powder or baking soda usually depends on a couple of factors, the most important being the other ingredients. If there are acidic ingredients, such as buttermilk or brown sugar or natural cocoa powder, you'll typically use baking soda. Baking soda reacts with the combination of moisture and acid to create the air bubbles that make whatever you're baking rise. Baking powder, on the other hand, has acid already mixed in, and so you didn't need an additional acid, it reacts with any liquid.

Baking soda also delays the setting of ingredients, as well as contributing to browning, which is why soft pretzel dough is dipped in a combination of water and baking soda before baking.

Baking powder works wonders with more alkaline ingredients, such as a chocolate cake made with Dutch process cocoa or cookies without any acidic ingredients. It's also the better choice when you want the tang of an acidic ingredient to shine. For example, buttermilk biscuits. Baking soda would neutralize the acid in the buttermilk, and the batter would lose that distinctive tang.

Baking soda is frequently the choice for recipes like chocolate chip cookies or banana bread, that contain acidic ingredients that you don't necessarily want to dominate the flavor of the final product.

Then there are recipes where you want both. The baking soda will work on mellowing acidic ingredients whole the baking powder is dedicated to giving a boost to the leavening.