#log #cooking #baking #chemistry
Made a few experiments baking minimalistic quick wheat bread in a microwave oven, in the hope that the discovered technology would allow me to produce something like <https://github.com/l29ah/muesli> but in a bread form, that could be eaten without utensils or waterproof containers w/o compromising its nutritional completeness.
First i made a diy baking powder premix by mixing 12g of flour, 3.5g of citric acid and 5g of baking soda together.
The journal entries of actual baking follow:
* oiled a ~150ml glass, 32g flour, 845mg diy baking powder, mixed, 12g sunflower oil added, 14g ~20C water added, mixed, nuked for 90s, looks bubbling and unready, nuked for 30s more, looks strange, cut it open, seems not very porous, probably due to gas escaping instead of foaming (lack of egg?), tastes tolerable and like a shortcrust pastry
* not re-oiled the glass, 38g flour, 785mg diy baking powder, mixed, 8g sunflower oil added, 19g water added, mixed, 5g more water added, mixed, seems like oil is very unevenly distributed, nuked for 4min @50%, looks not much bigger than the first one, cut it open, has huge voids and dense regions inside but overall is softer than the first one; probably i should spend more effort mixing the baking powder with the flour
* not re-oiled the glass, 37g flour, 903mg diy baking powder, mixed with a teaspoon in a cordless drill, 25g water and 5g oil added, mixed, nuked for 4min @50%, the size didn't change, cut it open, the voids are less pronounced but dense regions are still very pronounced, seems softer than the second one; cut two dense regions and put them into hot water, observed some fizzling, probably i should mix the water in much more thoroughly
* not re-oiled the glass, 48g flour, 1015mg diy baking powder, mixed with a teaspoon in a cordless drill, added 25g 35C water and 8g oil, mixed with a teaspoon in a cordless drill, worked out poorly as the dough stuck to the "shaft" too well, and the flour at the bottom didn't get pretty much any water, added 18g more water and mixed manually, certainly too much water now, but the dough is still clumpy after thourough manual mixing with a spoon, nuked for 4min @50% at the center of the rotating dish, the result is wettish and the corners of the bottom failed to make it out of the glass intact, but it's soft while still keeping its shape well and doesn't seem like having any annoyingly dense regions
The results are: https://tinystash.undef.im/il/3ryvFu8mmdsZFwxTSAeGpbmTRiYdmHezdvdLxWiNuKjn453nQT57bMzanJqXwu1JLFFv56a2MXUUiMok7f75L2EG
They aren't quite stellar, foaminess-wise. I've only dealt with commercial cake premixes with eggs before, and they worked out fine with similarily short exposures to microwaves; i think eggs help with foaming a lot, not sure how to replicate this w/o animal or poorly accessible products. Fatty acids? Agar? Some other surfactants/hydrogels?
