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Chemical leavening history and development by forward thinking chemists in the 1800s
D. JORDAN (1). (1) Kudos Blends, Kidderminster, United Kingdom
The most commonly used chemical leavening agents today are food phosphates and bicarbonates and the origin of these ingredients stem from the development in the early nineteenth century when the focus was on the reaction of an acid with a base to produce a salt plus water and carbon dioxide. The early ingredients used were potassium based and potash (potassium carbonate) played an important forerunner to sodium bicarbonate with evidence of its use in American recipe books of 1796. Developments in both the acidic and alkaline components were driven by both British (Bird and Jones) and US (Horsford) inventors in their desire to develop a commercial baking powder and self-rising flour for both military and naval outlets. Achieving neutrality of reaction to eliminate taste issues together with a chemically stable dry powder, moved leavening agent technology onwards to the use of sodium bicarbonate. The traditional leavening acid was cream of tartar and with cornstarch as a ‘filler’ achieved the first stable ‘fermenting powder’ subsequently known as baking powder. The development of acid calcium phosphate soon followed, probably by Horsford in America, through collaboration with Liebig in Germany who first experimented with phosphoric acid and phosphate salts offering slow release of carbon dioxide in the cold with the main evolution at oven temperatures. It is in this requirement where acid sodium pyrophosphate proved most favorable and led to its industrial commercialisation in early 20<sup>th</sup> century. Today sodium bicarbonate and food phosphates developed by those early chemists, more than a century ago are still extensively used in modern bakeries and for domestic use. With little progression in developing any ground breaking chemical leavening systems, the fundamental technology behind these ingredients remains the continued drivers for their highly successful application
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