In today's column I write about the un-acids, ingredients that are alkaline and give unusual flavors and textures to a small but significant set of foods that includes pretzels, tortillas and tamales, Oreo cookies, and ramen-style noodles. Baking soda, sodium bicarbonate, is a weak alkali and not good for much more than leavening baked goods. But a brief baking in the oven converts soda into soda ash, sodium carbonate, a much stronger alkali and a good substitute for lye, which is so strong that it's best handled with gloves and goggles.
In last week's Curious Cook column I wrote about the recent rise of minimal-work, maximal-moisture bread making, which seems to been instigated in late 2006 by Mark Bittman's description of the no-knead, bake-in-a-hot-pot method developed by New York baker Jim Lahey.
There's nothing new about labor-saving bread books.
The chemistry of dark, rich persimmon pudding is the subject of my column in the New York Times this week. There's also a recipe for a pudding with two very different colors and flavors.
One more surprising discovery about acrylamide that I neglected to include in my recent roundup. Among the foods with the highest known acrylamide levels is gingerbread as it's traditionally made in northern Europe--so high that in Holland, gingerbread consumption alone accounts for something like a sixth of the total year-round acrylamide intake. This is despite the fact that wheat flours don't contain nearly as much asparagine as potatoes.
