Sunday, May 14, 2017

Clash of the Leavening Agents

This class is a STEAM class where we discussed food. To be more precise we looked at baking, leavening agents, the history of mankind related to food and fire, and we even got a chance to bake our own foods. I especially found the part about mankind's history to be interesting because I didn't know the impact that food and fire had on us. I definitely did not know that we used to have massive arms since we had to live in trees and we had super strong guts so that we could combat bacteria that was in the food that we couldn't cook before. I really like learning about how we completely changed after we figured out that we could create fire and cook our food, it's the reason our brains are so large now. For our action project, we had to bake bread to see what kind of leavening agent rose the highest, my group cooked sourdough bread which uses the sourdough starter as a leavening agent. The other two groups were baking soda and yeast. This was a difficult project because my group had a very hard time getting the bread to bake correctly and in the end, we did not manage to make it work. It was still a valid experiment and we used it which meant our bread grew the least.

In this project, we compared how much sourdough, baking soda, and yeast rose compared to each other. There were a few different variables in the bread such as the baking time, leavening agent used, and the baking temperature. Leavening agents are what are used to make the bread rise. All the loaves are going to be compared with rising height, taste, and texture. The research question we will be asking is which leavening agent makes the bread rise the highest. My hypothesis is that the baking soda will rise the highest because we created baking soda to replace natural leavening agents, and I don't think that we designed something that can't perform as well as natural things so I'm guessing baking soda. There are also different things called control groups and experimental groups. The control group was the yeast and the experimental group was the baking soda and the sourdough. A control group is a group we know the outcome of and is more predictable. The experimental group is the group that we not sure of the outcome so we compare it with the control group to see what changed.

Control Group: Commercial Yeast Bread
Ingredient
Calculations
Revised Amount

Water
3 x 1/4
¾ cup

Flour
7 x 1/4
1 3/4 cups
Salt
1 x 1/4
1/4 tablespoon
Yeast
1 1/2 x 1/4
⅜ tablespoon



Experimental Group 1: Sourdough Yeast Bread

Ingredient
(copy from the recipe)
Calculations
Revised Amount
3 ½ cups flour

3 ½ x 1
3 ½ cups
2 cups of buttermilk
2 x 1
2 cups
1 teaspoon salt

1 x 1
1 teaspoon
1 teaspoon baking soda

1 x 1
1 teaspoon
1 teaspoon sugar
1 x 1
1 teaspoon



F
Experimental Group 2: Chemical Leavening Agent Bread

Ingredient
(copy from the recipe)
Calculations
Revised Amount
4 Cups
Water
4 divided by 4
1 cup
10 Cups
All-Purpose Flour
10 divided by 4
2.5 cups
3 ½ Teaspoons
Salt
3 ½ divided by 4
.875 teaspoons or ⅞ teaspoons
¾  cups of sourdough starter
 ¾ divided by 4
.187 cups or 3 tablespoons or 3/16 cups






Directions
-Yeast
  1. Mix all the ingredients in the bowl to form the dough.
  2. Cover the dough and let it sit for 2 hours then put in the fridge for 2 hours.
  3. Make loaves out of the dough then let it sit for another hour.
  4. Cut the top of the bread and put it in the oven for 10-15 minutes at 450 degrees.
-Sourdough

  1. Put all the ingredients except for salt into a bowl then mix it.
  2. Mix all the ingredients into the dough then let it sit for 15-60 minutes.
  3. Knead the bread and add salt as your kneading it.
  4. Let the dough sit for 4-6 hours.
  5. Form the dough into loaves
  6. Cut the top of the loaves then put them in the oven until the bread is 195 degrees.
-Baking Soda
  1. Combine all the dry ingredients then put in the buttermilk.
  2. Mix all the ingredients then put shape them into a loaf shape.
  3. Slit the dough.
  4. Bake the dough at 450 degrees for 30-40 minutes.
For this action project, we needed to make 1 loaf of each type of bread so we needed to convert the recipe to make 1 loaf. I put the conversion below.

Conversions
-Yeast
Everything x 1/4
  1. 3x1/4=.75 or 3/4 cups of water
  2. 7x1/4=1.75 or 7/4 cups of sugar
  3. 1x1/4=.25 or 1/4 tablespoon of salt
  4. 1 1/2x1/4=.375 or 3/8 tablespoons of yeast
-Sourdough
  1. 4x1/4= 1 cup of water
  2. 10x1/4=2.5 or 5/2 cups of flour
  3. 3 1/2x1/4=.875 or 7/8 tablespoons of salt
  4. 3 1/2x1/4=.1875 or 3/16 cups of starter
-Baking Soda
  1. Already makes 1 loaf of bread so there isn't a need for a conversion.



-Results
Yeast: The yeast bread turned out really well and it smelled, looked, and felt perfect. This loaf of bread rose from 2 to 3 inches tall after being baked.

Sourdough: The sourdough bread was a complete failure and could not have turned out worse. Neither loaves rose at all and I think the reason for the failure the first time was because of incorrect kneading technique, dead sourdough starter, and incorrect baking temperature. The second time failed because of kneading and dead sourdough starter. The first loaf of bread we cooked I wouldn't try but the second loaf tasted a lot like salt.

Baking Soda: The baking soda bread turned out very well. It smelled, looked, felt, and tasted good. It rose the most going from 2.5 inches to 4 inches. So it turns out that my hypothesis is correct. 



File_002.jpeg
RP, Sourdough 1, (2017)

Copy of 20170511_121140.jpg
DS, Sourdough 2, (2017)
Add caption

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RP, Yeast, (2017)

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RP, Baking Soda, (2017)















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