Eggs are Magic; No Eggs is Greater Magic
The truth is, I like baking more than cooking. Nothing calms me like kneading dough, which is why I made bagels all through election night. But I think it’s more practical to be an all-around chef, so that I’m able to pull off events or work as a personal chef, and not be tied down to a particular oven. All of this is to say that we started the baking module at school and I couldn’t be more thrilled about it.
The approach my school takes to baking is to teach us how to convert standard recipes to vegan, gluten-free, or slightly more healthy versions. It’s a useful method not only for getting good at making alternate baked goods, but because in the process of removing things like eggs and butter, we learn about the roles these ingredients play. I’ve learned so much that I’ll probably have to split it up between a bunch of newsletters, so I’ll start here with just eggs.
Eggs are magic (my notes literally say, “Eggs - they are magic.”) They do a huge number of things in baking, which is why they’re one of the most difficult items to replace. Along with the gluten formed by flour and water, they help bind dough together (this is why some vegan baked goods are so crumbly). As you might know from making mayonnaise, they help with emulsification, or incorporating the fat into the rest of the ingredients. Eggs are a leavening agent, both because they have a lot of moisture that turns to steam when baking, and because they trap air well. The process of whipping egg whites unwinds their protein and then re-strengthens them in a new interconnected web around little air pockets, that can stand up even when you (gently) fold an egg white foam into a batter. Eggs also add flavor, partly through additional fat, and moisture because their proteins trap water in foods, which means foods have longer shelf-lives. The yolks add some color (the yellow of yolks comes from a carotenoid that remains stable during baking) and help baked goods get browner by facilitating the Maillard reaction, which is the reaction that makes caramelized onions or roasted vegetables brown and sweet. Last, they give a baked good shine, like the crackly layer on top of brownies or in the form of an egg wash on Challah bread, because they form a protein-rich coating that repels excess moisture.
Because eggs play so many roles, they may need multiple ingredients to replace them. Certain recipes, like a génoise cake or meringue, rely so heavily on eggs that they probably aren’t worth making without them. Recipes that only have one or two eggs and plenty of flour, however, can usually be made with some kind of starchy substitution. The polysaccharides in the starches form extensive networks that are similar to the unwound egg proteins, and do some of the work of trapping moisture and disrupting gluten networks.
The substitution I’ve most often relied on is flax seeds. One tablespoon of ground flax seeds mixed with 2.5 tablespoons of warm water, left to sit for at least five minutes, is a pretty good replacement for one egg. The flax seeds are a good binder, so the replacement is best for chewy recipes like a brownie or certain cookies, but less applicable to fluffy or light foods like cakes. For those recipes, 1/3 cup of applesauce for one egg helps with the binding as well as adding moisture — though might still make the food denser, so an additional 1/2 teaspoon of baking powder could help. Applesauce tends to have the least impact on your flavor, but any other fruit purée can also work (banana bread is fairly easy to make without egg). Any kind of root starch like arrowroot or kuzu works well for emulsification, and even work in custards. I’ve seen a lot of resources online mention chia seeds as an egg replacer, but my baking teacher warned that they tend to soak up all the moisture and make baked goods tough. Finally, the fix we learned for the absence of a shiny egg wash is to water down maple syrup, or mix some soy milk and rice syrup, and brush it over your baked goods 3/4 of the way through baking (any earlier and the sugars might burn).
Learning how to remove eggs mostly makes me appreciate them more. Baking is one of the reasons I’ll probably never go completely vegan, but I’d like to be able to accommodate all diets in my work. And occasionally some recipes, like the vegan brownies below, taste even better to me than the originals.
What I’m reading
Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal, by Mary Roach
To a certain extent we eat with our ears. The sound made by biting off a piece of carrot — more so than its taste or smell — communicates freshness. René told me about an experiment in which subjects ate potato chips while a researcher digitally altered the sounds of their chewing. If they muted the crunch or masked the higher frequencies, people no longer sensed the crispness. “They rated the chips as old even though the texture had not changed.”
Pop science is one of my favorite genres — I’ve gone through phases on human cognition, animal cognition, octopuses, animal emotion, tree communication, mushroom intelligence, and lately found myself in the microbiome. I’ve read a lot of books by Mary Roach, who peppers her writing with middle school science teacher level puns and jokes and seems like a delightful person to be around. Gulp follows the structure of her other books, focusing this time on the subject of digestion, and winds through obscure medical history and interviews with researchers as it traces the path of food from the nose and mouth all the way out the other end. It’s interesting and easy to read, and while it doesn’t contain big life lessons like the list of books above, it always feels grounding to me to hear about scientists who are dedicated in their pursuit of some arcane knowledge.