What provides the acid for leavening in this banana bread recipe?
I have made this banana bread recipe a couple of times. The ingredients are:
- All-purpose flour
- Salt
- Brown sugar
- Baking soda
- Bananas
- Butter
- Eggs
My understanding is that baking soda requires some acid such as milk or yogurt to provide leavening. But this recipe doesn't call for anything that is an acid that I can see. Yet it does produce a perfectly edible loaf and not a dense brick.
What is reacting with the baking soda to provide leavening?
Best Answer
Most of the ingredients in this recipe are acidic.
ph values:
- flour 5.5-6.5
- brown sugar slightly acidic
- bananas 4.5-5.2
- butter 6.1-6.4
The salt is neutral and the eggs are not acidic, ph 7.1-7.9
The combination of these ingredients is acidic enough to interact with the baking soda to leaven the bread.
Even without the bananas, there would be some leavening. Consider the standard ingredients in chocolate chip cookies: flour, sugar, butter, eggs, salt, baking soda and chocolate chips. Though they don't raise nearly as much as banana bread, they do poof up a bit.
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What type of chemical leavening agent is being used in the banana bread?
Baking soda is the leavening agent of choice in quickbreads like banana bread, but you can also use other leavening agents, such as baking powder or yeast.What type of leavening agents is used in making banana cakes?
Another special thing about banana bread is its usage of baking soda for its leavening agent. While many kinds of bread use yeast for this, we use baking soda instead. For this recipe, we have baking soda to help the dish rise in the oven. And this gives it that nice, dessert-like feel as we do with muffins and cakes.Are bananas acidic in baking?
Bananas have a pH level of 4-5 making them more acidic than milk.Why Does banana bread need baking soda?
What does baking soda do in banana bread? In banana bread, baking soda does more than just help the loaf cake rise: it increases the pH of the batter, leading to a browner, much darker crumb and crust. it tenderizes by reducing gluten formation in the batter.Moist Banana Bread | How to make Banana Bread | Easy Banana Bread Recipe | Banana Bread Recipe
More answers regarding what provides the acid for leavening in this banana bread recipe?
Answer 2
The banana does. Bananas have a pH level of 4-5 making them more acidic than milk.
Answer 3
This depends on the banana that you are using there. You need to check if its ripe or unripe because unripe ones are little more acidic than the other. To be specific unripe bananas have a pH of around 5.6 and ripe one has a pH of 6.5
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