Fall Mini 03 - How chemistry revolutionized baking (For Melissa)
Hey. I'm Melissa.
Jam:I'm Jam.
Melissa:And I'm a chemist. And I'm not. And welcome to chemistry for your life.
Jam:The podcast that helps you understand the chemistry of your everyday life.
Melissa:Okay, Jim. Today, I'm gonna tell you about a revelation I had.
Jam:Okay. A revelation. That sounds big.
Melissa:It is big. It was a chemistry revelation that if I had realized sooner, would have saved me so much time and would have made my life so much easier.
Jam:Wow. That sounds like quite a revolution. I can see why you use that word to describe it. You know?
Melissa:Yeah. Well and also not just made my life easier, I guess, in All around, but in specifically the area of baking.
Jam:Okay. Okay. So some of us, like me, who don't bake very often, might not be quite as benefited by this revolution revelation.
Melissa:But revelation, not revolution. Yeah. It is kind of a revolution for me.
Jam:From missionary is, like, one way to you can describe these kinds of things and also a revelation.
Melissa:Right.
Jam:Yeah.
Melissa:So I told a few people who do bake about this realization, and they told me I have to share about it. Okay. Cool. That's what I'm doing.
Jam:I love that.
Melissa:So I've been baking for a long time, several years now, I guess. Probably 5 years as it been a major hobby of mine.
Jam:Nice.
Melissa:And when I first started, I didn't have a ton of money, but for my birthday, my brother gave me this really nice Set of nesting glass Pyrex bowls, so they're thick heavy glass.
Jam:Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:And I had a hand mixer. And then recently, I upgraded to a nice KitchenAid stand mixer. It's a limited edition of color. It's beautiful.
Jam:Oh, yes. I've seen this and heard about it.
Melissa:It's yes. I think I talked about it on here, Ian.
Jam:You did.
Melissa:And it came with a beautiful ceramic bowl and then also a stainless steel bowl that Has a white coating, so it's beautiful, and I'm obsessed. So those are the tools I used to bake All the way up until I got married. After I got married, I moved in with my husband, and he has different nesting bowls that are stainless steel bowls. So I use both of them now. Mhmm.
Melissa:Okay. So here's what happened.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:I consistently use bain marie's In baking. Do you know what a bain marie is?
Jam:I have no idea.
Melissa:It's sometimes also called a double boiler, but, basically, you have Simmering water and a bowl sitting on top.
Jam:Okay. I have heard the term dough boiler more, and I know what that is. Like and, yeah, I get it now.
Melissa:Okay. So for my wedding, I made my own wedding cakes. They're really cute, and they were delicious. And I had to make a filling that required a bain marie. It's a lemon curd filling, and I made buttercream frosting, but I made Swiss meringue buttercream, which Also requires a bain marie.
Melissa:You dissolve the sugar in the egg whites, and then you whip it up.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:And you're supposed to whip it up until it Cools down to room temperature after you've heated up the egg whites to dissolve the sugar in it, then you cool it back down while whipping. Okay. So I did that. I've done that a few times, and it always takes both of those things always take forever. Making lemon curd takes so long.
Melissa:Friend of the podcast, Abby h, had helped me make it before, and it takes so long. I would just be stirring constantly because you're basically cooking egg yolks, but you don't want them to scramble with some, like, lemon flavoring and stuff in them. Yeah. So you have to stir them constantly, but don't let them Gets so hot that they scramble or heat unevenly or whatever. Mhmm.
Melissa:So you're just standing there stirring until it feels like your arm's basically gonna fall off.
Jam:Okay. That sounds miserable.
Melissa:Yeah. But it's really delicious. You actually have had that lemon filling many times. Yeah.
Jam:I can see the draw. I mean, I get the payoff of not having to do any of the work and just tasting how great it tastes once you've already done all that. But if it was me, I probably would not be willing to put that work in and kill my arm like that if I was the one who has it. Worth it.
Melissa:No question. So that's always been my experience with the lemon curd. That's how it was when I made my wedding cake. That's how it's been ever since I discovered this recipe, honestly, probably In 2015. Mhmm.
Melissa:Now Swiss meringue buttercream, both times I did it, I had a similar experience. The first time, it took So long for the sugar to dissolve in the egg whites, I thought I must have done something wrong Mhmm. Because it took 20 or 30 minutes, and the be said, it should take 5 to 10. Uh-huh. And so I thought maybe it's good enough, and I just whipped it up, and it was really gritty and disgusting.
Jam:I see.
Melissa:So then I tried again, and I successfully dissolved the egg whites, but it took so long. I mean, Truly, I sat there ripping for probably 30 minutes whisking it all up.
Jam:Is it yolks or whites?
Melissa:It's whites for this recipe. Okay.
Jam:Got it. Sorry. What do
Melissa:you mean? Use both.
Jam:Got it.
Melissa:Got it. Okay. Swiss meringue buttercream is whites. Lemon curd is yolks, but you use both.
Jam:Got it. Okay.
Melissa:So When I made it for my wedding, I had that same experience. It took about 30 minutes to dissolve all of the sugar, and then I put it in My stand mixer with the ceramic bowl and whipped it up, and it was just not cooling down to room temperature. I had ice packs around the bowl to try to cool it down. I was doing all this stuff, and it turned out that my dad's air conditioner was broken.
Jam:Uh-huh.
Melissa:So it's kind of a disaster because the temperature matters so much. And so I thought maybe it was because of The air conditioner, and that was the problem. Uh-huh. Eventually, I made the frosting with much distress, and the cake was delicious.
Jam:Okay. Yes.
Melissa:Okay. But then, this weekend, some of our friends had a baby shower. They requested tiramisu and that lemon Cake with the buttercream that I made for my wedding. Mhmm. And I was making the lemon curd, and a friend came my neighbor came by to talk to me while I was making it, and it seemed like it went really fast.
Melissa:And I thought, oh, it must just have been because I had someone talking to me. But that was the easiest it's ever been to make this lemon curd. So that was kind of exciting.
Jam:Yeah. That's great.
Melissa:And then I was making the tiramisu, and my first attempt at it, I could not get the sugar to dissolve. And, eventually, the it was egg yolks, in this case, started to Bake out around the side without the sugar dissolving in them.
Jam:Dang.
Melissa:So I had to scrap it, and I started over. And the 2nd time, it went really fast. And that was really exciting. So I thought maybe I just figured out, adjusted the temperature enough or whatever. Uh-huh.
Melissa:But the real nail in the coffin was The next day when I was making the buttercream, the egg whites dissolved the sugar in 3 minutes flat. So in the past, I was making the sugar and it in the egg whites, and it took 30 minutes. And I got it dissolve in 3 minutes, Almost immediately did that
Jam:happen. Dang.
Melissa:And that's when I knew that something was different, and I had to figure out what it was. And here's what I realized.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:All of the times that it went really fast and worked really well, the only thing that I had done differently was I used One of my husband's stainless steel mixing bowls instead of one of my glass mixing bowls.
Jam:Oh, interesting.
Melissa:I don't prefer the stainless steel bowls because you can't see what's going on as well in them.
Jam:Right. Right.
Melissa:But then I realized It's all about heat capacity and specific heat.
Jam:Oh, back to, like, The episode 2.
Melissa:Back to episode 2.
Jam:Dang. That's right. Crazy.
Melissa:So the same reason that sand And water at the beach are not the same temperature is what happened with my baking.
Jam:Okay. Interesting.
Melissa:That's set in the universe between
Jam:glass and stainless steel must be pretty significant then.
Melissa:Yes. So, well, I don't know if the specific heat eat of each of them is different, but I'm gonna do a quick chemistry review.
Jam:Okay.
Melissa:So specific heat is the amount of heat it requires to raise one Specific unit, it's usually a gram, of 1 substance by 1 degree Celsius. And the heat capacity is the amount of heat it takes to raise 1 object by 1 degree Celsius. Mhmm. Mhmm. So that would be if I wanted to Take a doorknob and raise the whole doorknob as opposed to 1 gram of a doorknob.
Jam:Right. Right.
Melissa:Or in this case, If I wanted to heat a whole entire glass bowl versus a whole entire stainless steel bowl, The stainless steel bowl that is much thinner and much lighter and has much lower mass overall is going to take much less heat To raise by 1 degree Celsius.
Jam:Right. Right.
Melissa:Then a glass bowl that's heavier has more mass, it's gonna have to put in way more heat to bring that up. Yeah. Which is why, probably, we don't boil water in glass pans. We use stainless steel pans.
Jam:Yeah. And And it's interesting because in, like, in the case where you had a hard time getting the substance back down to room temperature,
Melissa:it would help
Jam:for it to have a lower, heat capacity because it going back down would be faster too. Correct? Like, a single seal bowl could cool down quickly more quickly.
Melissa:So that was the other thing I realized. It went to room temperature much faster when I did it at home too because I used my white stainless steel bowl.
Jam:Mhmm.
Melissa:But when I did it on my wedding, I used my ceramic bowl because I thought it was pretty and it was new.
Jam:Yeah. Yeah.
Melissa:So, essentially, I'm sure I learned at the very beginning of baking that usually for double boilers, they use stainless steel, But I didn't have that as an option, and I didn't have a ton of money to just buy a bunch of mixing bowls. So I just figured I'd use glass, and it would be just as good. But if I'd been using stainless steel bowls this whole time for my double boilers, I would have saved myself so much time. To Hours. Literally hours.
Jam:Man, that's crazy that it'd be that much of a change too. Like, I could see it being like, oh, it's a little better. But, like, it's it's amazing that it's that huge of a difference.
Melissa:It was legitimately the difference between 3 minutes to dissolve sugar and 30 minutes to dissolve sugar.
Jam:Man. And the difference of a lot less tired of an arm, I'm sure.
Melissa:Yes. It was so much faster, so much less of me checking to make sure if it was greater or not. Mean, it's just crazy to me what a difference it made.
Jam:Yeah. Wow.
Melissa:So that is how chemistry can help your cooking and how I realized that I should have been using different tools long, long ago. So, hopefully, my experience will help you bakers out there To actually use the proper tools for the job at hand. And that's my chemistry lesson for you today.
Jam:Dang. Awesome. It's also cool to have the benefit of that knowledge if I ever do get into baking and need to you do that thing that you did, like, use double bowlers and whatnot. Yeah. It's nice that I've never had to do it the other way.
Jam:It's been 30 minutes on it. I get this huge benefit of all your work and that many times it's taken you a long time to do. Yeah.
Melissa:You definitely do get the benefit of that. So you're welcome.
Jam:Well, dang. It's cool. Thanks for sharing that with us.
Melissa:Yeah. I was just really excited about that revelation, and I wanted to tell everyone about it. So I hope that was beneficial to you guys, And, hope you guys have an awesome week. Thanks for coming and listening and learning about baking.
Jam:And thanks for teaching us. And if you're a little confused why this is called a fall mini episode. Listen to fall mini number 1, and we kind of go into detail about what we're doing this fall. But, again, Melissa, thanks for teaching us. And if you have ideas and thoughts and questions or anything like that that you wonder about chemistry wise, you can reach out to us on Gmail, Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook at chem for your life.
Jam:That's chem, f o r, your life to share your thoughts and ideas. If you'd like to help us keep our show going and contribute to cover the cost of making it, go to kodashfi.com/chemforyourlife and donate the cost of a cup of coffee. If you're not able to donate, you can still help us by subscribing on your favorite podcast app and rating and writing review on Apple Podcasts. That also helps us to share chemistry with even more people.
Melissa:This episode of chemistry for your life was created by Melissa Colini and J. M. Robinson.
