The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

No baking powder allowed

rony_sha's picture
rony_sha

No baking powder allowed

Dear all.

We are not allowed to use baking power.

Does anyone had experience using a sourdough starter instead?

Thanks

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

Just kidding ...not.

So what are you making that you need baking powder and not allowed to use it?  Can you use yeast?  or soda?  or alien technology?  

Making a sourdough starter takes about a week and if you are lucky 4 days.  It can raise bread.  So can Yeast water which can be faster if you don't wish to feed and maintain a sourdough starter for a longer period of time.  Yeast water is made from fermenting fruit.

Mini

rony_sha's picture
rony_sha

I have a great sourdough starter, thanks to the advices of this site.

We cannot use either baking powder or soda, so I thought to try using the starter for cookies and cakes.

 

suave's picture
suave

I think most cookies would be a problem, but as far as cake concerned your best bet are sponge cakes that use no leavener at all.  They are somewhat harder to make, but it's far from an impossible task.

Mini Oven's picture
Mini Oven

where the egg whites are beaten stiff and then folded into the batter.  This makes a nice moist cake.  The egg whites do the lifting.

Mini

Glass-Weaver's picture
Glass-Weaver

(genuinely polite voice) May I ask why you can't use baking powder or soda?  I would be interested in the reason behind your quest. 

Terri

rony_sha's picture
rony_sha

About 7 months ago my wife and me started a very strict diet.

We were told to avoid flour (using just barley and spelt), no cow dairy products (just lamb or goat dairy products), no yeast or chemical leaveners, and eat only the vegetables, fruits and spices that originally grew in our area/country, avoiding canned products, no sugar or honey (just concentrated apple juice or what we call date-honey (Sillan)) and try to avoid meat except chicken.

The diet had an imidiate effect on us so we are trying to to be as accurate as possible.

We started baking our own bread: using sourdough for the spelt and making flat bread with the barley.

So i thought it was time to try some sweet stuff too.

 

Elagins's picture
Elagins

not sure what the context is of not being able to use chemical leaveners, but if you can use yeast, then surely you can make sweet yeast breads like babkas, stollens, panforte, and also pastries like danish and various coffeecakes.

if leavening is completely out, then puff pastry is probably the answer, with multiple thin layers of dough separated by butter or lard, where steam does the work of leavening.

there are a lot of recipes here for all of those things ... look around.

Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com

rainwater's picture
rainwater (not verified)

French Cake that uses only whipped eggs to leaven....quite nice actually.....not that much trouble really.  I make mine whipping the whole eggs with the sugar until they don't expand anymore, then fold in cake flour (AP is okay) and clarified butter or vegetable oil....substitute a little cocoa for the flour to get a chocolate genoise. 

The Genoise is the desssert equivolent to Baguette.....Eggs, sugar, flour, oil; that's all.