The Great British Baking Show is hands down my favourite thing to watch these days. The competition begins with twelve amateur bakers who are whittled down to three finalists until the winner is crowned at a delightful fete with family, friends, and former contestants gathered around. In each episode the bakers complete three challenges based on a theme like bread, pastry, spices, or even vegan baking.

One week the bakers were tasked with creating yeast cakes, which I had never heard of before. This brought to my consciousness the fact that before the mid-1800s yeast was the only leavening agent in the history of baking.

Did you know that baking powder did not exist before the nineteenth century?

In the 1830s bakers did begin experimenting with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate), which requires an acid to activate it. This was relatively easy to accomplish by using sour milk but since the acidity varied the results were unpredictable.

The next development in the history of leavening came in 1846 when English chemist Alfred Bird added cream of tartar (potassium hydrogen tartrate), a byproduct of wine fermentation, to baking soda. The two ingredients were sold separately so they would not react prematurely. Unfortunately the price of cream of tartar was prohibitive and the supply dependent on the grape harvest. (Isn’t it nice that Bird was trying to figure out how to make bread for his wife who had yeast and egg allergies?)

Soon Harvard chemist Eben Horsford suggested replacing cream of tartar with calcium acid phosphate (monocalcium phosphate), which was extracted from bones treated with sulfuric acid. (He obtained a patent for his process in 1856). Horsford then discovered that he could mix baking soda and calcium acid phosphate with cornstarch to keep the agents dry and prevent a premature chemical reaction. This was sold as Horsford’s Bread Preparation and later Rumford Baking Powder. (In case you are wondering, in the 1880s mining for calcium acid phosphate eliminated the need for bones.)

Now bakers could add just one reliable leavening agent to their recipes. Since it was double-acting it would begin reacting as soon as it was mixed with water and then again when it reached a higher temperature in the oven, resulting in light and fluffy baked goods.

That is the history of baking powder in a nutshell. Check out the sources below if you want to learn more about the dramatic rivalries in the baking powder industry!

Now let’s end with a quotation from this Smithsonian article that emphasizes the difficulty of baking before baking powder: “In the 18th century and earlier, most baking was dictated by the delicate whims of respiring yeast. And we aren’t talking about dry or refrigerated yeast; this was way before fridges and commercial packaging. First you had to make the yeast, by letting fruit or vegetables or grains ferment. Once you’d done that, your hard-earned rising agent could still be killed or weakened by temperatures that were too hot or too cold, or contamination from bacteria.”

Much as I enjoy baking with my sourdough starter, I am thankful for commercial baking powder!

Sources

• “Baking Powder” via What’s Cooking America
• “Development of Baking Powder” via American Chemical Society
• “The Great Uprising: How a Powder Revolutionized Baking” via Smithsonian Magazine

P.S. Does anyone else remember the chapter in Anne of the Island where Anne is mortified that Diana sent in a story she wrote to a contest sponsored by Rollings Reliable Baking Company of Montreal?

“But you know — I’m so amazed — I can’t realize it — and I don’t understand. There wasn’t a word in my story about — about — ” Anne choked a little over the word — “baking powder.”

“Oh, _I_ put that in,” said Diana, reassured. “It was as easy as wink — and of course my experience in our old Story Club helped me. You know the scene where Averil makes the cake? Well, I just stated that she used the Rollings Reliable in it, and that was why it turned out so well; and then, in the last paragraph, where PERCEVAL clasps AVERIL in his arms and says, `Sweetheart, the beautiful coming years will bring us the fulfilment of our home of dreams,’ I added, `in which we will never use any baking powder except Rollings Reliable.'”

Priceless.