cooking chemistry question

[boxofdelights]

So my daughter and I were making zucchini bread (delicious!) in my new silicone loaf pans (I love living in the 21st century!) and I said, "You mix the dry ingredients and I'll do the wet." And then I said, "The sugar was supposed to be a wet ingredient, actually."

And then I wondered why that is. Because the sugar would clog your sifter if you were using one? Because the sugar mixes better if it gets to dissolve? Those are just rationalizations, aren't they? Do you know the real reason?

Comments

[wild_irises]

I don't know the real answer, but I do know that sugar is often creamed with butter, which results in a wet ingredient. That might help.

[fourgates.livejournal.com]

Without any real knowledge I'd guess it acts as an emulsifier for eggs & oil, giving both more even distribution when the wet & dry are combined.

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

I was going to say something like this, but not including the disclaimer. From experience, I see that creaming the sugar with the butter allows better mixing. I wonder if the mechanism is like this: having creamed the butter and the suger, you've actually transormed them into a mixture of tiny fat particles, tiny air particles, and tiny sugar particles. When you add the liquid it dissolves the sugar, leaving tiny fat particles suspended evenly throughout the batter.
Obviously when your recipe has eggs, there's an emulsfying action going on there.

[boxofdelights]

Yeah, if the shortening is solid at room temperature then recipes always call for blending shortening with sugar first, and I can see that that makes the shortening mix better with everything else. Thanks!

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I know I've heard an explanation from Alton Brown, and this uses some of the same words (air, particles). Alas, I don't recall which episode -- cookies of some sort, maybe? Chocolate chip cookies?

[boxofdelights]

Thank you!

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

I think the eggs are the emulsifier for the oil.

[randomdreams.livejournal.com]

My guess is that putting the sugar in with the wet allows it to dissolve early and completely, which keeps the final product from being gritty. When I want a bit of gritty I use turbinado sugar, which dissolves more slowly due to the crystal size.

[jinian.livejournal.com]

Harold McGee implies in his new book that both air bubbles and dissolution are important. I am under too many cats to go get his more thorough On Food and Cooking.

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I've never heard of sugar classified as wet before. I wonder if it's a Brit vs. NorAm thing?

[redbird]

I think it's a "how we talk about baking" thing. The process often involves making a wettish mix (eggs, shortening, vanilla extract, and yes sugar) and a mix of dry powders (flour, baking soda and/or baking powder, salt, cocoa powder if you're using that), and then mixing the dry powders into the wet mixture. You could say "you do the powders and I'll do the glop," I suppose.

[pennski.livejournal.com]

This looks like the difference between the creaming method and the rubbing-in method to me. In the creaming method, the sugar goes in with the wet ingredients as above and all the dry ingredients are mixed together. In the rubbing in method, the fat gets rubbed into the flour first and then the sugar is added and then any other (wet) ingredients.

Do these processes have similar names in the US or completely different ones?

[lizw.livejournal.com]

British recipes often use that procedure too - as pennski says, the alternative would be the rubbing-in method - but the instruction would be something like "Cream together the butter and sugar; beat together the eggs and vanilla extract and mix into the creamed butter. Mix together the remaining dry ingredients, then fold into the egg mixture." (We don't normally say "shortening", so the recipe would specify a particular fat.) IME if a recipe with that list of ingredients said "mix together the wet ingredients", it would mean the eggs, vanilla essence and possibly the fat, but even that would be doubtful - it would depend on the type of fat. Suet, for instance, would be considered dry; lard probably would; and butter could be dry or wet, depending on whether it's melted, softened or straight from the fridge. "Mix together the dry ingredients" would IME include the sugar, and that's how I'd expect "you do the dry ingredients" to be understood between people talking in a British kitchen. I probably wouldn't ever say "you do the wet ingredients", because the issue of whether the fat is wet would make it too ambiguous, and I'd want to specify the method. I'd probably give the request in stages ("you cream the butter and sugar... now beat the eggs and add them in").

[pyrzqxgl.livejournal.com]

As a person who does a lot of baking but doesn't like having extra pans to wash, I always dump the dry ingredients into the Kitchenaid mixer bowl and mix to stir them evenly, then dump all the wet ingredients in and whip it like crazy, and it's always good. Or for cookies I always cream the butter and sugar (and any spices and/or extracts) first, then add eggs, then flour and leavening, then other bits like nuts and chocolate chips.