Free The Baking Answer Book by Lauren Chattman

in the oven. Once in the hot oven, these gases will expand, stretching those gluten cells. The well-developed gluten expands to accommodate the gases, until the protein solidifies at a certain temperature.
The open crumb of an artisan bread is a sign that the yeast was lively and productive, producing plentiful carbon dioxide,and the gluten in the flour was well-developed and was able to stretch and contain the gas. At a certain temperature, rising ceases because the proteins will coagulate, eventually becoming the glossy crumb and crisp crust of a well-baked loaf or pastry.
5. Eggs and air. Many cake and cookie recipes will direct you to beat eggs into creamed butter and sugar. Doing so will incorporate yet more air into your batter. But these recipes are still relying primarily on creaming and chemical leaveners to create air bubbles.
Other cake recipes, however, rely more strongly on eggs, both whole and separated, for a good rise. There are several ways to handle eggs so that they will function this way. Sometimes, a butter cake recipe will direct you to beat only the egg yolks into a mixture of creamed butter and sugar, then whip the whites in a separate bowl and fold them into the batter. Incorporating additional air into the whites will give a butter cake extra lift when a lighter texture is desired.
Recipes for French-style sponge cake, or génoise, will direct you to beat whole egg yolks and sugar over simmering water until they are warm and the sugar is dissolved, and then continue to beat them off-heat until they’re pale yellow and reach the “ribbon” stage. This takes between 3 and 5 minutes and produces a mixture that is pale yellow and thick, and when lifted by the beaters falls back into the bowl in thick “ribbons.” As with creaming, air is incorporated into the eggs. Warming the mixture softens the fat in the yolks, which makes the egg and sugar mixture more elastic and able to hold more air. The dry ingredients are sifted over the yolk mixture and very gently folded in, sometimes along with a small amount of butter.
    The cake must be baked immediately, before the foamy batter starts to deflate.
American-style sponge cake has a lighter, dryer texture than génoise, not only because it doesn’t contain any butter to weigh it down and moisten it, but because whipped egg whites are folded into the batter just before baking. The protein in egg whites, when properly whipped, unwind and link up with each other, similar to the way proteins coagulate when cooked, but stay moist and elastic. Air beaten into them expands in the oven until the proteins set at a certain temperature.
The lightest style of cake, angel food cake, contains no egg yolks or butter and is leavened solely with egg whites. This type of cake must be baked in an ungreased pan for two reasons. Any kind of fat will destroy the structure of whipped egg whites, dissolving it and ruining the cake’s chances of rising. In addition, when the low-protein (because it has no yolks) cake is removed from the oven, it needs to cling to the sides of the pan as it cools, allowing it to solidify before it can collapse in on itself. For the same reason, to protect its high but fragile rise, an angel food cake should be inverted straight out of the oven and cooled upside down in the pan, so that gravity can preserve the rise until the proteins in the cooked whites solidify.
    Baking Experiment
    The Half-Pound Cake recipe on the following page is an example of how cake can be raised by creaming alone.
Half-Pound Cake
    Pound cake is a traditional English recipe dating back to the early eighteenth century, famous for its easy-to-remember ingredients: 1 pound each of butter, sugar, eggs, and flour. A 4-pound cake, however, is a bit large for most households, so I’ve adapted the traditional recipe to a more modest size and, like most modern versions, for a lighter, more tender cake.
Most recipes today call for a little bit of baking powder or baking soda as