In 1791, Nicholas Leblanc, French chemist and surgeon, discovered how to produce baking soda or sodium bicarbonate from common salt.
Bicarbonate of soda began to be used as a raising agent form the early 19th century and baking powder after that. The first use of baking powder began in about the 1830s.
In 1846 two bakers, John Dwight and Austin Church, established the first factory to develop baking soda.
Baking soda plus acid (initially cream of tartar) and starch resulted in baking powder. The first modern version of baking powder was discovered and manufactured by 1843 by Alfred Bird, a British chemist so he could make yeast free bread for his wife, Elizabeth, who had allergies to eggs and yeast.
It was further improved and formulated by Eben Horsford, who patented it as baking powder, the first calcium phosphate baking powder.
After the Civil War, American cooks started to use baking powder and other newly arriving and increasingly affordable ingredients.
In 1873, Marion Harland who wrote cookbooks Common Sense in the Household: A Manual of Practical Housewifery was one the first to include recipes for the kind of chemically leavened white cake and yellow cake commonly found at birthday parties.
Harland early on praised and promoted Royal Baking Powder. August Oetker, a German pharmacist made baking powder very popular when he began selling his mixture to housewife.
The recipe he created in 1891 is still sold in Germany as Baking. He stated the mass production of baking powder in 1898 and patented his technique in 1903.
The race of baking powder and baking soda companies to promote their brands, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, resulted in a few slanderous advertisements that depicted some products as ‘poison like’.
In 1889, Calumet Baking Powder was marketed as the first double-acting baking powder whose leavening began in the bowl and repeated in the hot oven.
History of baking powder
