Bubble, bubble — without toil or trouble
As Harvard celebrates its 375th anniversary, the Gazette is examining key moments and developments over the University’s broad and compelling history. Baking, whether breads, cakes, or muffins, is ultimately about the bubbles. More than 150 years ago, a Harvard professor figured out how to put the bubbles into bread, making a lasting contribution to both the culinary arts and the pantries of modern kitchens through baking powder. For millennia, the bubbles that gave bread and other baked goods their light texture came from yeast, which gives off carbon dioxide when mixed with flour and water. The gas forms bubbles in the dough, which expand on baking. In the 1800s, the search was on for a way to make bread that didn’t require the hours that yeast takes to work. Harvard chemist Eben Norton Horsford hit on the right combination. Horsford was the Rumford Professor of the Application of Science to the Useful Arts, and was...