What Is Baking Powder?
Baking powder is one of the most useful tools in any baker's or homeowner's cabinets. It's a combination of baking soda and a powdered, edible acid. It prompts items like bread to rise and combine properly throughout the cooking process. Most baking powders also include cornstarch, which prevents the formula from clumping and reacting before you're ready for it to.
How Baking Powder Affects Results
While this soft white powder is easy to miss when compared with eggs, chocolate, flour, and everything else that goes into an excellent baked good, it's a vital part of nearly every recipe it's included in. In cakes and biscuits, it's something of a substitute for yeast, serving as the agent that causes dough to rise. To react properly, however, the baking powder must be fresh and high-quality, and to determine these qualities, one of the first things consumers look at is color.
Consumer Expectations of Baking Powder
While color is not necessarily an indicator of freshness or quality in baking powder, most consumers will pay attention to the color. This is why every baking powder manufacturer or baking company needs to produce baking powder that's consistently the color consumers expect. A dull or off-white coloration may signal to buyers that the powder is not mixed correctly or will not meet their needs, leading them to move on to other brands.
A spectrophotometer offers a way for companies to measure the color of baking powder consistently and efficiently, and at HunterLab, we have the perfect solution.
