Author: Betsy Tuggle

One of my absolute favorite hobbies is baking, so I wanted to not only share my experience with baking but also discuss the science behind common baking ingredients. We’re going to be exploring five different ingredients: yeast, cream of tartar, butter, baking powder, and baking soda. Let’s get started!

 

Yeast

Yeast is vital when it comes to creating a hearty loaf of bread, but yeast is incredibly temperamental. When growing yeast for bread, you have to put the yeast in lukewarm water (between 105℉ and 110℉). If the water is too hot, the yeast will die, and if the water is too cold, nothing will happen. Having a good base of yeast is the first step to creating bread, so if you mess up this first step, you might as well start over (Exploratorium, n.d.). Luckily, it usually only takes a few minutes to get the yeast to rise after feeding it some sugar, so you won’t be reset too far.

 

Cream of Tartar

There’s a fair chance that you might not be familiar with this ingredient, so I’ll gladly explain. According to the McGill Office of Science and Society (2023), cream of tartar is a partially neutralized tartaric acid that is a byproduct of winemaking. Cream of tartar can be used for a number of purposes, but its most important use-case for baking is maintaining structure. My main experience with cream of tartar is when making macarons. You have to create a meringue during the process, and this is where cream of tartar is absolutely necessary. Cream of tartar is what allows egg whites to whip into a firm meringue and not lose its form. Using expired cream of tartar or even none at all will affect how your macarons rise, making them collapse in on themselves. For this reason, cream of tartar is crucial in delicate baking.

Butter

Butter is a prominent ingredient in most baked goods, but something most people don’t realize when they’re using butter is how important the temperature is. You’ve probably read a recipe before where it says something like room temperature or melted or frozen; well, this clarification is very important. The temperature of butter when it’s being combined with other ingredients defines its role as a binding agent at different parts of the process. For example, if butter is melted, it will most likely be a part of the liquids section of a recipe, and if it is room temperature, it will most likely be with the solids. From my experience, frozen butter is usually used to prevent butter from melting too quickly and burning in an oven. All of these temperatures have specific and special roles (McCoy, 2015).

Baking powder

You’ve most likely heard of baking powder or its counterpart, baking soda (which we’ll be talking about next), but you may not know the science behind it. According to Sorangel Rodriguez-Velazquez at American University (n.d.), baking powder is classified as a high quality chemical leavener. Baking powder is activated through moisture and heat and releases gas that moves throughout the baked good, allowing it to expand and grow in the oven. It’s very important to not use too much baking powder because it could cause your baked goods to collapse (Rodriguez-Velazquez, n.d.). Baking powder is pretty crucial to making baked goods like cakes and preventing them from becoming too dense. 

Baking Soda 

Now I know what you’re thinking, what is the difference between baking soda and baking powder? Well for starters, baking soda has only one ingredient, sodium bicarbonate, while baking powder contains that and two acids. The real difference when baking though is that baking soda reacts immediately while baking powder works at different stages, depending on if it’s single or double acting. Both act as leavening agents; however, since baking soda does not have acids built into it, it is only really used when there is some sort of acidic ingredient in it such as cream of tartar or buttermilk (Shipman, 2024). That’s why it’s usually baking soda in recipes involving those ingredients. 

 

Baking is such a fun and fascinating scientific process. I hope next time you find yourself baking, you understand the ingredients you are working with better and appreciate the science that goes into every little moment.

 

 

References

Exploratorium. (n.d.). Bread Science 101. Exploratorium. https://www.exploratorium.edu/explore/cooking/bread-science

Pellegrinelli, C. (2024). What is Yeast?. The Spruce Eats. https://www.thespruceeats.com/basic-yeast-information-304312

Schwarcz, J. (2017). Cream of Tartar. McGill Office for Science and Society. https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/general-science-history/cream-tartar

Greaves, V. (2023). Cream of Tartar: What It Is and How to Use It [Photograph]. All Recipes. https://www.allrecipes.com/article/cream-of-tartar/

McCoy, J. (2015). Beyond Flavor: The Science of Butter. Institute of Culinary Education. https://www.ice.edu/blog/beyond-flavor-science-butter

TWOELLIS. (n.d.). [Photograph of three sticks of butter]. Getty Images. https://www.allrecipes.com/article/salted-vs-unsalted-butter-what-s-the-difference/

Rodriguez-Velazquez, S. (n.d.). 5.5: Baking Powder. American University. https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Biological_Chemistry/Chemistry_of_Cooking_(Rodriguez-Velazquez)/05%3A_Leavening_Agents/5.05%3A_Baking_Powder

Shipman, M. (2014). The difference between baking soda and baking powder. North Carolina State University. https://phys.org/news/2014-05-difference-soda-powder.html

Berkheiser, K. & Richter, A. (2023). What’s the Difference Between Baking Soda and Baking Powder?. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/baking-soda-vs-baking-powder#:~:text=When%20to%20use%20which%20one,needed%20to%20produce%20carbon%20dioxide.

Light, J. (2024). Science of Baking Cover Art. STEMComm.

In July of 2024, oxygen was discovered on the ocean floor where no light nor plants were present. After various tests, it seems as though the different minerals located on the floor of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone are acting as a large collection of batteries that are being charged by the electric currents flowing along the ocean floor (Lingam et al., 2024). This immediately sparked numerous tests with the purpose of discovering if life can grow and exist with dark oxygen production (DOP). This research is incredibly important because it may indicate certain conditions in which life may exist on a water or ice planet.

Through research done at Cornell University, we have learned a few things about this phenomenon. The oxygen was collected using a benthic chamber, a chamber which allows on-site measurements of the exchange rates of substances between the ocean floor and the water in and around the chamber (Sweetman et al., 2024) (Figure 1).

Based on the oxygen measurements, it seems that the potential reason for oxygen to be present without photosynthesis on the ocean floor is the concept of electrophy, which is the process of separating water into its elements (hydrogen and oxygen) through the use of electricity. For the circumstances on the ocean floor where the phenomenon was discovered, it seems there are numerous electric currents going across the ocean floor which could trigger this electrophy. They then charge the elements on the ocean floor (lithium, cobalt, copper, etc.) to essentially create natural batteries (Lingam et al., 2024). The oxygen created from this phenomenon has since been dubbed, dark oxygen due to its creation from a lack of sunlight (Colarossi, 2024).

In terms of what creatures could exist in a domain created from DOP, we know that metazoans (animals) may be able to exist in these conditions if they are in the millimeters of sizes; however if an organism is able to have “internal circulation systems for the distribution of oxygen” (Lingam et al., 2024), then the upper size boundary of these organisms could instead be between approximately 0.1 cm to approximately 10 cm.

There are still many factors to consider during the early stages of this discovery, but if this system proves consistent, the possibility of life on fully water or ice planets increases dramatically. There could be entire systems of creatures living on ocean planets that are entirely unknown to us, but the research of this topic has become threatened by seabed mining companies.

Since there’s a plethora of elements that are used in making batteries on the ocean floor, many seabed mining companies are pushing for the ability to strip mine in these areas and profit off of the abundance of resources.

A quote by the BBC with Professor Murray Roberts, a marine biologist from the University of Edinburgh, states, “There’s already overwhelming evidence that strip mining deep-sea nodule fields will destroy ecosystems we barely understand,” (Gill, 2024). These strip mining endeavors could severely hinder the research being done about DOP by disrupting the habitat in which it is occurring. To prevent this over 800 marine biologists from 44 countries have signed a petition in hopes of halting the strip mining process and allowing more discoveries to occur in this field without interruption (Gill, 2024).

There is still a lot to discover about this process and its impact on the world around us, but the potential of this discovery has incredible implications for our understanding of the creation of life not just on Earth but on other planets as well. We can only look forward to more discoveries like this from the depths of our mysterious oceans.

 

References

Lingam, M., Balbi A., & Tiwari M. (2024, August 13). Dwellers in the Deep: Biological Consequences of Dark Oxygen. Cornell University. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2408.06841

Gill, V. (2024, July 22). Dark oxygen made by deep sea “batteries.” BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c728ven2v9eo

Colarossi, J. (2024, August 15). Oxygen produced in the deep sea raises questions about extraterrestrial life on other planets. Boston University. https://www.bu.edu/articles/2024/deep-sea-oxygen-raises-questions-about-extraterrestrial-life/#:~:text=This%20phenomenon%20creates%20enough%20energy,oxygen%20made%20with%20no%20sunlight

NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research (2019). [Deep sea metal lumps of oxides of iron and manganese]. Southeastern U.S. Deep-sea Exploration.

Sweetman, A.K., Smith, A.J., de Jonge, D.S.W. et al. Evidence of dark oxygen production at the abyssal seafloor. Nat. Geosci. 17, 737–739 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-024-01480-8

Carvalho, V. [Benthic Chamber]. Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology.