We haven’t been doing as much baking in recent times and our baking powder canister has an expiration date on it that has past. Seems to work OK for me but the Mrs is giving it the stink eye.
Is there something in Baking Powder that could break down with age? Or is this yet another example of a product they stick an expiration date on just to encourage buying new stuff?
Moisture can render baking powder less than effective. If it still fizzes in water, it’s good.
Basically, everything. As everyone (or at least every Doper) should know, acids react with bases, and often give off gases in the process. Those gases then make bubbles in things like your pancakes, making them light and fluffy. Some recipes call for the acidic and basic ingredient separately, such as buttermilk or sour cream or lemon juice or vinegar or a host of other things for the acid, and baking soda for the base (basic foods are really rare, for some reason). But for some recipes, that’s too much work, so they call for both the acid and the base in the same ingredient, baking powder. Baking powder is a mixture of baking soda and some sort of acid, which is prepared in such a way that they don’t react until you put them in your recipe (this typically means either until they get wet, until they get heated, or a combination of both). But these barriers to reaction aren’t perfect, so while its sitting on your cupboard shelf, the acid and base in baking powder are slowly reacting together anyway. When they’re completely reacted, what you’re left with won’t do you any harm, but it won’t do you much good, either, unless you want your pancakes to be tortillas.
Note the distinction, by the way, between baking powder and baking soda. Baking soda is just pure sodium bicarbonate, and should stay usable pretty much indefinitely.
Yeah, 'ceptin the tendency to absorb odours gacky or otherwise.
My baking powder sat unused for decades, and I recently started baking again. It’s working just fine. It has a tight-fitting plastic lid on it.
There is not likely anything growing in it. If it works, then its fine.
While baking soda will absorb acidic odors, it really isn’t very good at it. That open container of baking soda people put in their fridge is useless. Unless you constantly stirr the baking soda and circulate air through the box, it essentially just sits there. It absobs slightly on the surface, then does nothing. In reality, the people keeping the baking soda in their fridge and claiming it works, are just keeping their fridge cleaner.
Ooh yeah. I like to scare people by baking things then announcing, once they’ve sampled the treats, that ‘You’d never know that baking soda came out of my sock drawer.’