An Analysis of Acid-Base Reaction and Fermentation Induced Leavening Agents in in Bread Making

Leavening is used to describe the culinary process in which an agent is added to raisebread during baking. Leavening agents release air bubbles inside the dough, and this creates thefluffy texture of well-raised bread. For example, yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) is a commonleavening agent used in baking, which produces carbon dioxide (CO2) during fermentation byconverting sugar into CO2 gas and ethanol (C2H5OH) (Miller 523). On the other hand, chemicalleavening agents depend on the phenomenon of acid-base reaction to produce CO2 for leaveningin baking (Miller 523). The two popular chemical leavening agents were brought into ourattention: baking powder and citric acid and baking soda. In this experiment, we showedequivalent amounts of chemical leavening agents cannot substitute the same amount of yeast asleavening agents, and we discovered baking powder was a slightly better leavening agentcompared to citric acid and base mixture, as the mean volume of baking powder leavened breadwas 42% less than the volume of bread baked with yeast, while the volume of citric acid andbaking soda leavened bread was 46% less than the volume of bread baked with yeast.