Chemistry Of Baking Research Paper

When we first were signing up to choose our topics, I chose baking because I like to simply bake. I thought that there could be some chemistry involved due to heat in the oven changing food from liquid to solid. I was so wrong. Even though the oven and heat portion plays a major factor, a good portion of the real chemistry lies in the ingredients we use to make such delicious dessert treats and our different breads. From the ten different sources I looked up previously, for the Annotated Bibliography portion, I found that each of the websites say roughly the same thing. A good amount of the websites talked about the common ingredients used in the world of baking, and what chemistry purpose each individual ingredient provides. These individual …show more content…
"Our sense of taste has evolved to covet the molecules vital to life like salt, fat and sugar. When we eat food, the simple sugar glucose is absorbed from the intestines into the bloodstream and distributed to all cells of the body. Glucose is particularly important to the brain as it provides a major source of fuel to the billions of neuronal nerve cells."(Why) The author of this article explained it best. In a way sugar is needed for survival, but those that do a major binge on sugar suffer from more of a psychological disorder. There is a region in the midbrain called the hypothalamus; the hypothalamus is the "pleasure center", it controls the drive for food and sex. Having an hyperactive hypothalamus or Hypothalamic Dysfunction, a more proper psychological diagnosis, can result in someone contracting BED, Binge Eating Disorder. If someone has BED, a lot of the time they are not consuming the healthiest diet; and even when they get full they still continue to eat. There are chemical impulses, called neurotransmitters, that send signals and messages from one neuron to another. In those messages they are telling the brain to keep eating and eating and eating. Binge Eating Disorder is one of the most common eating disorders diagnosed, but only affects about 6% of Americans in the US (3.5% of women, 2% of men, and up to 1.6% of teenagers). In this case, it is not their fault for their …show more content…
A cookie! The process of baking a cookie is broken up into three parts: The Spread, The Rise, and Color and Flavor Injection. There is an ingredient in cookie dough, butter, also know as C9H14O6. When the butter gets heated inside the oven, it will melt. The Spread of a cookies basically summarizes that when due to the butter melting, the cookie will lose its round structure. Once that structure is lost, it begins to flatten out; making us have flat, round cookies! The Rise explains that about 212 degrees Fahrenheit the water inside of the cookie dough turns into steam, making the cookie start to rise. As the vapors push through the dough, these gases produce the holes we see in a cookie; which also makes it light in weight. This explains why when you first roll the dough and put it on the cookie sheet, it is heavier than once you have taken it out the oven, after baking. The final process of Color and Flavor Injection, is broken down in to processes: Caramelization and Maillard Reaction. Again, in Caramelization the sugars are breaking down and transform from shiny and odorless crystals to a brown and fragrant liquid. This liquid gives a cookie its smell and taste! The Maillard Reaction was named after French physician and the chemist Louis-Camille Maillard. It occurs every time you heat a mixture of sugars and amino acids. From 1912, he had to find the understanding of why raw