Baking discovery

[betweensunandmoon]

My grandmother brought over some banana muffins she'd baked herself, and I learned that failing to properly mix in the salt and baking soda results in the end product tasting incredibly salty and bitter. According to her, the recipe said "Do not overmix" in all caps, but I don't think the author meant you shouldn't mix the ingredients...

Comments

[igenlode]

Interesting -- I suppose that if you don't mix the ingredients effectively, the result is that you get concentrated pockets of raw product which correspondingly taste much stronger :-(

You definitely don't want to be able to taste the baking powder, which is why scones (which require a *lot* of raising agent proportionate to the flour) are better made with bicarbonate of soda rather than baking powder -- it's more powerful and you need less of it.

American muffin recipes tend to emphasise that the mixture ought to have lumps of unmixed flour in it; I'm not sure why, as cupcakes in this country are normally mixed 'to a dropping consistency', i.e. until the mixture will fall off the spoon, and are definitely not supposed to have dry lumps in them!

[betweensunandmoon]

Interesting -- I suppose that if you don't mix the ingredients effectively, the result is that you get concentrated pockets of raw product which correspondingly taste much stronger :-(

Evidently so. :P

American muffin recipes tend to emphasise that the mixture ought to have lumps of unmixed flour in it

I've actually never seen that, except in the case of corn muffins.