Elana's Pantry Forums » ingredients

1. 

   straka
   Member

   Recently I baked bread the other day (btw incredible recipes Elana) using just walnuts (I substituted almond flour) - we have plenty of walnuts in our garden, so it is my first choice for lots of reasons as you can imagine.

   However - the walnuts, when combined with baking soda go black. I mean BLACK. It looks like burnt! But tastes great.
   When I just sprinkle them on fruits and bake with butter and honey at the same temperature, they never change color, so I figured it must be the soda.

   Anyone experienced something like this and know what to do about it?

   thnx a lot.

   Posted 1 year ago #
2. 

   colormepink
   Member

   I can't have almonds or almond flour so my favorite substitutes are walnuts and homemade walnut flour. Walnuts contain tannic acid (also found in tea, if you've ever seen anything "tea-stained" it is tannic acid stained), I think your baking soda reacted with the acid. I've never seen that reaction myself but I did a little research and found an archival photography forum that mentioned mixing tannic acid with baking soda to achieve different colors, specifically black. Maybe it has something to do with your walnuts being so fresh, from a quick skim on Google I read that green walnut hulls have more tannins than dried hulls. I don't think it will hurt anything other than it just being dark and maybe doesn't look as good as it tastes.

   I did notice my baked goods were darker than Elana's photos and sometimes had a slight bitter taste if it had a long bake time. I read about the tannins in walnuts and started blanching my walnuts to remove some of it before I ground it up into flour. It doesn't do much to the oil content so I still have to reduce the added oil to my recipes but the finished products are a more pleasing and lighter color, no more bitterness and it even improved the texture somewhat.

   Posted 1 year ago #
3. 

   straka
   Member

   Colormepink, thank you for all that info. I dont know much about tannins, but seems like it´s a spot on. I definitely have to look into that more.

   But next time I bake, and it´s gonna be soon because I just finished my last loaf, I´ll try to blanche them first and use it that way.

   It also could be the type of soda - sodium bicarbonate. dont know if that could make much difference. Maybe I´ll try regular baking powder instead, but Im not a big fan of that.

   Thanks for the tip again, I cant wait to try it and see if there´s some change. I´ll post it here then.

   Posted 1 year ago #

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