Recipe For Cooking Batters And Doughs Rise Or Lighten

Expansion Of Water In Composition

The expansion of water by heat into several hundred times its volume is taken advantage of in making johnny cake (joune or journey cake), which originated with the American Indians. The early settlers in this country learned how to make it from the squaws. The grains of corn were parched in hot ashes, sifted and beaten into powder, then stored in long leathern bags. When food was needed, a few spoonfuls of meal were mixed with snow in winter, with water in summer, and eaten uncooked, or cooked before the open fire. Fifty years ago johnny cake was a common yeast article of food in New England, but it was made from cornmeal ground at the miller's and baked in the oven.

Expansion Of Air Incorporated

In making gems, as the spoon goes in and out and over the batter in beating, air is carried into the mixture, and the glutinous cell walls of the flour confine air; this expanding when heated (air at 70° expands about three times its volume at the temperature of a hot oven), in connection with the expansion of the water or milk used as liquid as it is changed into steam, makes the gems light. In making puff or plain paste, it is the expansion of cold water used in mixing, and of cold air incorporated by folding, when the paste is placed in the heated oven, that gives lightness to the dough. Lacking heat, the glutinous cell walls do not harden when thus expanded, and the desired lightness is lost.

We also make use of the glutinous consistency of albumen in eggs in lightening batters and doughs. In this case, too, the greatest care must be exercised in adding the beaten eggs to the mixture, lest the expanded cells be broken, and in baking at such a temperature that the cells do not expand too quickly; and yet there must be sufficient heat to fix or harden the walls.

Leaven

Without doubt the earliest method of lightening batters and doughs was the one noted at the beginning of the chapter, the knowledge of which probably came by accident. Yeast plants always present in the air, settling upon grains that had been crushed between stones and mixed with water, and left in a warm place, would feed upon the sweet substances in composition and thus change them into other substances, one of which, carbon dioxide, would lift up the dough. A piece of this dough added to a piece of fresh dough would lift up or leaven the whole.

Yeast

As other plants than yeast are also floating in the air, many of them being inimical to the growth of the yeast germs, great uncertainty would result in the use of natural leaven. After many years of experiment, it was found possible to secure a pure culture of yeast plants, and to store these in such a manner that life lies dormant until the proper conditions for growth are present (leaven or yeast is one of the principal leavening agents of to-day). The process of using leaven and yeast is long; to secure lightness by the expansion of air or water requires much care in mixing and baking, whence other means of securing lightness were sought for by chemists.