Bringing food chemistry to life

Congratulations to Subha Ranjan Das an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry @ Carnegie Mellon University For The Kitchen Chemistry Sessions and The taste of Chemistry Lots of inspiration and resources available through these links Chemistry in the Kitchen a forum The Kitchen Chemistry Sessions A Facebook page CMU’s Magazine Our 2011 FST 425 [...]

Great discussion of the bread-making process by award winning, erudite, and articulate baker Craig Ponsford. Craig is a past chairman of the board of  the Bread Bakers Guild of America and won the French and Specialty Breads category in the 1996 Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie in France, the win helping to energize the [...]

Can’t show the students for administrative reasons, but we had a good and educational time once again. Bringing you highlights from the second iteration of  ”BRINGING FOOD CHEMISTRY TO LIFE”. >>><<< DISPERSED SYSTEMS: Mayonnaise and egg white foams, and ways of messing them up that were instructive for the chemistry lesson. POLYMERS 101: Using the [...]

Final lab session of our Food Chemistry class this year. An experience of the effects of pH on browning reactions. We make a variant of traditional soft pretzels, using a rather leaner formula than often used [for us no milk or eggs]. The loss of lactose from the milk and glucose from the egg might [...]

Starting a class today – Food Polymer Science for graduate students. Getting students engaged is a challenge – even at this level (MS & PhD candidates) – some of them are only doing the course for required credits. So what can we do? Mano Singham in Liberal Education** rails against the traditional “rule-infested, punitive, controlling [...]

A new post “Forays in Fermentation” from Jeremy at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog, via Research Blogging highlights two recent papers on fermentation that go beyond the usual beer/wine paradigm that I see in some students that choose our fermentation option. The papers are Nout, M. (2009). Rich nutrition from the poorest – cereal fermentations in [...]

So far this summer I have given two short workshops using wheat, flour, bread,  and baking as a way of bringing food chemistry to life. The First group was the Oregon Farm Bureau’s  Summer Agriculture Institute on the theme of Grain-Gluten-and Great bread. And started with the quote from Henri Fabre a 19th C French [...]

There are many elements needed to create a good and compelling class – good material, a willing instructor, but the essential element is enthusiastic and dedicated students.  It is a circular argument: enthusiastic students generate enthusiasm in the instructor, which generates enthusiasm in the students, and around we go again. I was privileged to have [...]