The prophetess Ellen White have been given counsels as to the use of leavening agents in food. The following are some of her comments regarding baking powder and soda (or saleratus):
The use of soda or baking-powder in bread making is harmful and unnecessary. Soda causes inflammation of the stomach, and often poisons the entire system. Many housewives think that they can not make good bread without soda, but this is an error. If they would take the trouble to learn better methods, their bread would be more wholesome, and, to a natural taste, it would be more palatable. Ministry of Healing, 300-301.
Saleratus in any form should not be introduced into the stomach; for the effect is fearful. It eats the coating of the stomach, causes inflammation, and frequently poisons the entire system. Some plead, “I cannot make good bread or gems unless I use soda or saleratus.” You surely can if you become a scholar and will learn. Is not the health of your family of sufficient value to inspire you with ambition to learn how to cook and how to eat? Testimonies for the Church 2:537
Hot biscuit raised with soda or baking powder should never appear upon our tables. Such compounds are unfit to enter the stomach. Hot raised bread of any kind is difficult of digestion. Graham gems which are both wholesome and palatable may be made from the unbolted flour, mixed with pure cold water and milk. But it is difficult to teach our people simplicity. When we recommend graham gems, our friends say, “Oh, yes, we know how to make them.” We are much disappointed when they appear, raised with baking powder or with sour milk and soda. These give no evidence of reform. The unbolted flour, mixed with pure soft water and milk, makes the best gems we ever tasted. If the water is hard, use more sweet milk, or add an egg to the batter. Gems should be thoroughly baked in a well-heated oven, with a steady fire. The Review and Herald May 8, 1883 paragraph 5
A nutritionist working for the Ellen White estate in Andrews University gives an explanation for this. Her mother, the late Dr. Alice Marsh, was born in 1908 and attended Mrs. White’s funeral as a young girl with her father, a minister in the conference at the time. When she became interested in these dietary matters, she made it a point to talk with older women who were experienced cooks from Mrs. White’s time.
E. G. White’s counsel against the use of soda and old-fashioned baking powder was indeed a valuable health reform message. Excess or unneutralized soda (alkali) will leave an alkaline residue in foods. This alkali may have several undesirable effects:
1. B-complex vitamins (especially thiamine, B1) and vitamin C are destroyed by alkali. Whole wheat and enriched white flours are a chief source of B-complex vitamins. A person who commonly uses unneutralized soda in flour products would cut his vitamin intake. Vitamin C is also destroyed by soda, although today soda is rarely added to foods that are high in vitamin C. In Ellen White’s day, however, cooks frequently put soda into vegetables because it shortened cooking time by softening tough cellulose (such as bean skins and broccoli stems), and soda preserves a bright color in green vegetables even if they are greatly overcooked. Both the thiamine in beans and the vitamin C in broccoli will be destroyed if soda is added.
2. Excess soda can irritate the mucous membranes lining the digestive tract. Ellen White speaks of unhealthful breads containing soda “breaking down the digestive organs” of many. Two facts enter here: a) the irritation of mucous membranes, and b) the destruction of the B-complex vitamins that are essential for a healthy digestive tract. In Mrs. White’s era even yeast breads often had soda added. Because no pure, reliable yeast was available, bread dough often sat an entire day, night or longer at room temperature before the poor “starter” had caused the dough to rise. This long period gave plenty of time for undesirable bacteria to contaminate the dough, producing acid products which caused the dough to “sour.” The housewife would then salvage this sorry soured mass by adding soda to “sweeten” it.
Incidently, with such conditions it is easy to see why Ellen White counseled against using milk in breadmaking. Milk is such an excellent protein food that bacteria can grow easily in it at room temperatures. It would have been dangerous to include milk, especially the unpasteurized milk of that era, in the bread dough through the long rising period. If bacteria had multiplied in the dough, thorough baking would kill them. But wood- or coal- burning stoves without oven thermostats had no reliable temperature control so that bread, though nearly burned on the outside, might remain somewhat unbaked in the middle. Under such conditions, harmful organisms in the center of loaves could live through the baking, then cause illness and cause the bread to spoil rapidly. By counseling against the use of milk in yeast bread making, Ellen G. White gave a safer bread recipe–a bread dough that would not be so favorable to bacterial growth.
Present day rapid-action yeast and improvements in equipment eliminate bacterial dangers, and milk added to bread makes a much more nutritious loaf. Mrs. White speaks of putting milk in quick breads that did not require long rising periods of many hours (Counsels on Diet and Foods, 343).
3. Excess soda may cause a white flour product to look yellowish or have yellow spots, and it may have a “soapy” taste.
Soda can be used in recipes that also include enough acid food to neutralize it. By learning a few rules one can quickly determine whether the soda in a recipe will be neutralized:
1/2 tsp. soda is neutralized by: 1 cup sour milk (buttermilk), or
1 Tbsp lemon juice, or
4 oz. baking chocolate (not Dutch), or
1 1/4 tsp cream of tartarFor example, a recipe which includes 1 tsp soda and 1 cup sour milk would leave 1/2 tsp soda unneutralized in the finished product (the 1 cup sour milk neutralizes only 1/2 tsp soda). This could be remedied by adding the right amount of acid (1 Tbsp lemon juice or 1 1/4 tsp cream of tartar), or by removing the excess soda and replacing it with baking powder which automatically neutralizes itself. The guide for replacement is: 1/2 tsp soda is equal to 2 tsp baking powder in leavening power. So the above recipe could be corrected either by the addition of acid or by removing the excess 1/2 tsp soda and adding 2 tsp baking powder.
Baking powder is a combination of soda and a food acid. In Ellen White’s time baking powders were often sold in a container with two separate compartments, leaving the housewife to combine accurate amounts from each side. The chances of chemically balancing the soda and acid to exactly neutralize each other were extremely slim. Housewives of that era commonly combined these powders “heavy on the soda side” so that the product would not taste sour due to extra acid. Such unbalanced baking powder would have the same disadvantages already listed for excess soda.
All baking powders on today’s market are completely balanced so that only a neutral residue remains. There is little to question about their use, unless one is concerned over the traces of neutral residues. There is no evidence that these residues are harmful and they may even furnish trace amounts of substances the body can use. This is true of baking powders made with a calcium acid (e.g. Rumford) where the neutral calcium residue has been shown in animal studies to be absorbed and utilized by the body. Rumford Baking Powder also contains no aluminum salt, which some people prefer to avoid.
These facts about soda and baking powder could not have been explained in Ellen White’s day, for food science was still in its infancy. That our current knowledge on this subject completely supports her writing is yet another example of E. G. White’s advanced counsel.
It probably is still wise to use little chemical leavening. Good baking techniques (such as thorough creaming of fat and sugar when used in the same recipe with chemical leavening) make large amounts of soda and baking powder unnecessary. But never should a substandard, heavy, sodden baked product be lauded as a “health food” because leavening was omitted.
