Never mix up the powder and the soda.Byline: FOOD DUDE By Lewis Taylor The Register-Guard Food Dude is on record defending unusual pizza toppings. I cited barbecue chicken pizza as my evidence and quoted the owner of a local pizzeria. "What we've found with most people is that if they like a particular kind of food, they like it on their pizza as well,' the pizza dude explained. Being pretty progressive when it comes to hand-held food, I agreed with the dough tosser that people needed to broaden their pizza horizons, but now I'm recanting my statement. This is a trend that has gone too far. They're now putting refried beans re·fried beans pl.n. Beans that have been cooked and then mashed and fried with seasonings. [Translation of Spanish frijoles refritos : frijoles, pl. on Italian pies. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for fusion cooking Noun 1. fusion cooking - cooking that combines ingredients and techniques and seasonings from different cuisines cookery, cooking, preparation - the act of preparing something (as food) by the application of heat; "cooking can be a great art"; "people are needed , but mixing and matching ingredients doesn't always work out so well. Sometimes great tastes don't go so well together. It's like when you were a kid and made a suicide fountain drink A fountain drink is a soft drink, prepared locally from a supply of flavored sweetened syrup, carbon dioxide, and water, either manually (as American pharmacists of yore did), in a device called a soda fountain, or in a vending machine which is essentially an automated soda fountain that at the 7-Eleven. Mountain Dew, Coca-Cola, Mug Root Beer Mug Root Beer is a brand name of root beer made by the Pepsi company. Mug was first produced by the Belfast Beverage Company in San Francisco, California during the early 1950s. Its name was changed to Mug Old Fashioned Root Beer. and orange Fanta may be delicious on their own, but mix them together and you've got a cup of carbonated dishwater dish·wa·ter n. Water in which dishes are to be or have been washed. dishwater Noun 1. water in which dishes have been washed 2. that only an 11-year-old could love. If you've got something to say, say it to the Food Dude. Write to the address at the end of the column. Dear Food Dude: Help! I put baking powder in a recipe that calls for baking soda baking soda: see sodium bicarbonate. and my cookies taste metallic. Is there anything I can do to rescue the rest of the dough I've got sitting in the fridge? Do you have any tips on keeping these two ingredients straight? - I'm a dummy Dear Dummy: I think you're going to have to toss your cookies, so to speak. Bonnie Hathaway, owner of Eugene's Monster Cookie, says there's no quick fix for your problem. And although she's never made the same mistake in her kitchen, she knows what it's like to have to say goodbye to a perfectly good batch of treats. "Once, somebody accidentally put salt instead of sugar into (the mixer)," she says. "It was like eating a little bit of the beach. We threw away 20 dozen cookies." While baking soda and baking powder are both leavening agents and both are used in various cookie recipes, Hathaway says the two ingredients are not interchangeable. And unfortunately, there's no easy-to-remember rule of thumb for when to use one and when to use the other. "Maybe you could label the bottles better," she suggests. It also might help to know a little about how the two leavening agents work. Baking soda is bicarbonate of soda. Baking powder often includes baking soda along with several other ingredients. Most baking powders are comprised of bicarbonate of soda, cream of tartar cream of tartar, white crystalline powder. Chemically it is potassium hydrogen tartrate, KC4H5O6, the acidic potassium salt of tartaric acid. It is used as the leavening agent in baking powders. and cornstarch cornstarch, material made by pulverizing the ground, dried residue of corn grains after preparatory soaking and the removal of the embryo and the outer covering. It is used as laundry starch, in sizing paper, in making adhesives, and in cooking. . Baking soda is basic (nonacidic). Baking powder contains acid. Recipes that call for baking soda require an acid such as lemon juice or buttermilk buttermilk residual fluid after removal of fat from milk in butter manufacture; a protein-rich supplement fed to pigs. to activate the leavening. Since you're going to throw away your dough anyway, it might be worth adding some baking soda to see what happens. Shawn Harding, a manager at the Muffin Mill, doubts you will see positive results. He predicts the cookies will spread and turn darker than they should be since baking soda serves to neutralize the acidity in the dough. In general, an excess of baking powder in a recipe that calls for baking soda will tend to make cookies cakier, says Catherine Reinhart, co-owner of Sweet Life Patisserie pa·tis·se·rie n. A bakery specializing in French pastry. [French pâtisserie, from Old French pastiserie, from pasticier, to make pastry, from *pastitz, . She says the metallic flavor may be from the type of baking powder. Some powders contain sodium aluminum sulfate. If that's the case, you may want to consider replacing yours. "Personally," Reinhart says, "I don't care to eat aluminum." Talk to the Food Dude at www.registerguard.com/fooddude. |
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