Mad about Science: Complicated confections

By Brenden Bobby
Reader Columnist

Sorry, 7B. This one is a birthday present to myself. Cue the sad, lonely, lip-dampened noisemaker celebrating the slow march to the grave.

As a person afflicted with an unfortunate intestinal allergy to gluten, I find myself binge-snacking during episodes of The Great British Bake Off, salivating over delicacies that I can no longer enjoy. My own sweet tooth must be tempered by gluten-free goodies formed to vaguely resemble the confectionary goodness scandalously shot in ultra high-definition on my TV screen.

Gluten free sweets have come a long way in recent years, but one cannot escape the fact that gluten is a great binding agent and xanthan gum — the byproduct of fermentation utilizing Xanthomonas campestris bacteria to create a complex sugar — just isn’t the same.

Gluten’s unique properties allow wheat-based flours to create light and fluffy pastries, moist cakes and breads that are somehow crispy on the outside and light and chewy on the inside.

The baked Alaska. Courtesy image.

Some of the delicious treats in this feature will showcase the human mastery of baking science. How much food was wasted or destroyed to create these confoundingly complex dishes? The world may never know.

Baked Alaska

One of the most complicated confections to create isn’t the dreaded French croquembouche, but the American-made baked Alaska. A traditional baked Alaska is a layer of cake beneath a layer of ice cream beneath a layer of meringue that is put into the oven without melting the ice cream. Fear not — this is no feat of witchcraft but an act of science willfully exploited by science-minded chefs the world over.

First created in the 1800s, this dish was inspired by a French dessert called omelette Norwegge, which as you can probably guess is a reference to Norway’s icy forests. The scientific magic that occurs here is all thanks to the abundance of air in the whipped egg whites of the meringue, which acts as an insulator for the ice cream. Air is a fantastic insulator — just look at Venus. Venus has a very thick atmosphere that traps heat from the sun. Pockets of air in the extruded foam or fiberglass panels that likely line your walls at home are the reason for why your house remains a different temperature from the outdoors throughout the year. This barrier of air trapped by egg proteins makes for an effective insulator that keeps the ice cream cool while your cake is in the oven, provided you adequately cover the ice cream with appropriately whipped meringue. 

It’s worth noting that you pre-bake the cake portion before adding the ice cream and meringue, so the time it spends in the oven is to caramelize the meringue and not bake the cake.

Baumkuchen

Another confectionary creation of the 1800s, which literally translates from German as “tree cake,” is unlike any other cake in the world. It’s hollow in the center and cooked on a spit like a pig or the intrepid Dwarf of your D&D party that got a little too close to the goblin encampment. It’s also notable that this cake sports “rings” like a tree, which is how it earned its name.

The rings of this cake are formed when cake batter is slathered onto the spit. As some of this cooks, more batter is slathered on. This is done over and over again until the baker is satisfied and then coats the outside in sugar and chocolate, removing the spit and leaving a funky hollow interior. Each layer cooking separately and then together doesn’t allow the batter to bond as it would have, had it been cooked all together at once.

Baumkuchen was a pretty big deal in Germany. Called the “king of cakes,” it was also known as the “cake of kings” when multiple kings and later emperors hired the bakers of the town of Salzwedel, from which the cake originated, as royal suppliers. It has since become popular internationally, in as far-flung places as Japan and Hawaii, where they have become important cultural confections for kings and common folk alike.

Baklava

One of the most ancient and persevering forms of pastry in the world is Baklava. Its influence has been felt in every corner of the culinary world from strudel to Éclair and even McDonald’s apple pies. The history of this flaky dessert stretches back to the eighth century B.C.E., likely somewhere in the Middle East — some think the Assyrian Empire in what is currently Iraq.

What makes Baklava special is its flaky nature. Try as you might, there will never be a truly authentic representation of baklava for those of us that can only go gluten-free. Gluten’s nature to be smashed, stretched and pulled to the point of near-breaking while remaining extremely thin is how baklava gets its flaky nature. The dough is pulled and flattened until it is practically transparent, then layered dozens of times. In some Christian celebrations, it contains 33 layers to represent the 33 years of Christ’s life. An interesting take for an Assyrian dessert turned Islamic staple.

Baklava’s reach is strongest in the Middle East and Mediterranean Coast, which makes sense when one examines the reach of the Muslim caliphates from 632 through 1517 C.E., paired with the spread of the Ottoman Empire between 1481 and 1914 C.E. 

Given the treat’s immense popularity in this time and the numerous crusades mounted by the kings and emperors of Central Europe, it should come as no surprise that the German strudel and a whole host of layered French pastries bear a striking resemblance to the Turkish Baklava.

It turns out that the science behind the adding of layers and butter between them is very intentional to control the outcome of the pastry. As heat is applied, the water and fat of the butter turns into steam, which expands to create gaps in the layers. As it cools, the moisture molecules contract and allow some of it to escape in gaps without blasting a hole in the side of the pastry. The fats that didn’t essentially boil away create a crispness to each layer once the bulk of the moisture has baked out. The caramelization of sugars also contributes to the crispness of each bite.

Stay curious, 7B.