Baking soda in sweet recipes

Baking soda in sweet recipes is mainly used to give fragrance. It is very useful, for example, in the preparation of biscuits and shortcrust pastry . One tip is enough.

Sometimes there is some confusion and it is believed that baking soda alone can be used as a leavening agent in cake recipes. Not so, unless you use it together with cream of tartar or another acid ingredient (lemon, for example). The leavening is in fact a chemical reaction due to the development of carbon dioxide which is trapped inside the compound; thus air pockets are created which make it rise, or swell it. Baking soda is a base that needs to react to an acid to cause leavening. Tartaric acid, better known as cream of tartar, is often used as a reagent together with bicarbonate. Dosing well acid and base is not easy; there are, however, on the market, sachets very similar to those of chemical yeast for desserts, already dosed. They are used in the same way as chemical yeast sachets, they are added, that is to the recipes of desserts, as the last ingredient, before baking.

Sodium bicarbonate must always be sieved before using it in recipes.

Find out also what is and how to use natural yeast

Baking soda in savory recipes

Baking soda in savory recipes is used for different purposes.

• In the shortcrust pastry or in the brisé dough it serves, as in biscuits, to give fragrance. The amount needed is minimal, the tip of a teaspoon is enough for a pound of pastry.
• Baking soda is also very useful when you want to cook dried legumes . In that case it should be added to the water in which chickpeas and beans are soaked; serves to make them softer and more digestible. One tip is enough. The legumes are then rinsed and cooked in other water.
• Added to the cooking water of cabbage and turnips, a teaspoon of baking soda softens the smell that develops in the kitchen during the preparation of these vegetables.
• Sodium bicarbonate reduces the acidity of tomatoes ; just add a pinch to the sauce.