Somebody thinks he has discovered that snow, when incorporated with
dough, performs the same office as baking powder or yeast. "I have
this morning for breakfast," says a writer in the _English Mechanic_,
"partaken of a snow-raised bread cake, made last evening as follows:
The cake when baked weighed about three quarters of a pound. A large
tablespoonful of fine, dry, clean snow was intimately stirred with a
spoon into the dry flour, and to this was added a tablespoonful of
caraways and a little butter and salt. Then sufficient cold water was
added to make the dough of the proper usual consistence (simply
stirred with the spoon, not kneaded by the warm hands), and it was
immediately put into a quick oven and baked three quarters of an hour.
It turned out both light and palatable. The reason," adds the writer,
"appears to be this: the light mass of interlaced snow crystals hold
imprisoned a large quantity of condensed atmospheric air, which, when
the snow is warmed by thawing very rapidly in the dough, expands
enormously and acts the part of the carbonic acid gas in either baking
powder or yeast. I take the precise action to be, then, not due in any
way to the snow itself, but simply to the expansion of the fixed air
lodged between the interstices of the snow crystals by application of
heat. This theory, if carefully followed out, may perchance give a
clew to a simple and perfectly innocuous method of raising bread and
pastry." And stop the discussion as to whether alum in baking powders
is deleterious to health or otherwise.
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