Tag: Salt

Dried Pasta, Water and Salt

Table of Contents

Cooking Dried Pasta

Pasta

Pasta is a starchy food products that has been cooked in Italy for centuries. Other food productd made with wheat – e.g. couscous – are known in countries around the Mediterranean.

Italian buyers have favoured semolina, a coarsely ground flour ground from Durham wheat, a hard, high-protein wheat. Modern “fresh’ pasta recipes for pasta dough for manual and electric pasta machines (that press and cut the dough) call for some semolina, some lower protein “soft” flour (e.g. US “all purpose”) or white bread flour, and water. Some recipes call for some salt, and for eggs to make egg pasta noodles. The dough recipes are similar in proportions of flour and water to bread formulas

Wheat flour will form gluten when water is added, which makes the dough extensible and elastic. Pasta is an unleavened product; the dough, made of flour and water, does not ferment or rise. Dough is pressed and cut into noodles. Gluten makes the noodles hold their shapes. The noodles are cooked in boiling water. Fresh noodles may have to be cooked fairly soon; industially manufactured fresh pasta has become a refrigerated product available in grocery stores.

Dried

Dried pasta was developed by Italian manufacturers in the 19th century and the early 20th century. It is more durable than fresh pasta. It is made by mixing flour and water into dough, extruding the dough through dies, cutting it, moving it on conveyor belts to drying machine, drying it and packaging the dry noodles. The Wikipedia article pasta processing provides an overview. Whole wheat and gluten-free dried pasta products became available during the late 20th century. Dried pasta generally is made without salt and has very little sodium.

Dried pasta noodles vary: long, short, and shaped. Noodles gain weight and volume when cooked in water. Dried pasta of any given weight generally absorbs about the same amount of water as the same amount of differently shaped dried pasta. The Dry to Cooked Pasta Calculator: A Comprehensive Guide at the Lyn’s Kitchen site provides the amounts of gain, by volume, in tables. Four US ounces (112 g.) of dried elbow pasta (macaroni), a short pasta, which is one US cup by volume, yields 2.5 cups of cooked pasta. (The same amount, by weight, of dried long or shaped noodles yields different volumes of cooked pasta.) The tables at that site do not estimate the weight of the wet, drained, cooked pasta. The USDA tables, discussed below, suggest that the main difference between 100 g. of uncooked and cooked dried pasta is that cooked pasta has an additional 51 g. of water, suggesting that less than 50 g. of dried uncooked pasta gains over 50 g. during cooking.

The USDA FoodData Central data has nutritional information about some cooked pasta in the Survey Foods (FNDDS) and Legacy Foods (2018) databases. and states nutritional information for a stated volume (e.g. 1 cup) or weight (100 g.). The Legacy Foods data has separate entries for uncooked dried pasta and salted cooked pasta. Noted with respect to 100 g. of uncooked dried pasta or cooked pasta:

  • uncooked dried pasta contains about 9 to 9.9 g. water;
  • cooked pasta contains about 62 g. water;
  • dried pasta cooked without salt has 1 mg. of sodium; and
  • dried pasta cooked with salt has 131 mg. of sodium .

Culinary Advice

Many culinary sources discuss the best practices for cooking dried pasta: to drop dried pasta in boiling water and drain it when the pasta has been hydrated and cooked al dente (which may vary from the time specified by the manufacturer). The sources vary on the amount of water. The majority recommend a gallon of water (4 US quarts, or 16 US cups, by volume) for one pound (454 grams) of dried pasta. A pound of dried pasta is said by many culinary writers to be enough for four servings of cooked pasta. A US gallon of water weighs about 3,800 grams, and has a volume of 3.785 liters. A cook may decides to use less cooking water:

  • to cook less than 1 lb. of dried pasta, or
  • to use a recipe or method that uses less water for other reasons.

Low-salt and other health oriented cookbooks (e.g. The American Heart Association’s Low-Salt Cookbook) counsel against salting pasta water while most culinary sources advise the home cook to cook the pasta in salted water to make the pasta taste better. Older culinary sources say that pasta has been traditionally cooked in water “as salty as the sea” but modern sources dismiss that standard. Some sources also say salt slows the gelatinization of starch in the pasta and makes the pasta more firm. The majority of culinary sources recommend 1 Tablespoon (3 tsp.) or 4 teaspoons (of ordinary table salt – i.e. made of moderately fine crystals) in 1 gallon. A printed example: The Complete Italian Vegetarian Cookbook, (1997) by Jack Bishop. Web sources:

1 Tablespoon of table salt weighs 17.1 grams. 1 Tbsp. of salt dissolved in water adds to the total weight of the cooking water by about .005. It contributes 6,720 mg. of sodium ions to 1 gallon cooking water. Some of the boiling cooking water evaporates, and some is absorbed by the pasta. There is a question about how much
sodium dried pasta absorbs when cooked in salted water.

The America’s Test Kitchen/Cook’s Illustrated site, a culinary site, minimizes the sodium added by cooking dried pasta in salted water on the basis of “independent” testing. But, it did not say how the test was conducted and state the results:

Adding salt to pasta’s cooking water ensures that the pasta is
flavorful. Throughout the years we’ve zeroed in on a preferred ratio of 1 tablespoon of table salt to 4 quarts of cooking water per pound of
pasta for the most well-seasoned pasta of any shape or size.

Give or take a few milligrams of sodium, all the shapes absorbed about the same amount of salt: 1/16 teaspoon per 4-ounce serving or a total of 1/4 teaspoon per pound of pasta. … even if you are watching your sodium intake, the amount pasta actually absorbs is so
small that it’s probably not an issue.

How Much Sodium Does Salted Cooking Water Add to Pasta?

An article published on the culinary MarthaStewart.com web site suggested the amount of sodium added to pasta by cooking it in water with 1 Tablespoon of salt was minor:

Sodium patrollers can rest easy knowing that your pasta will not absorb the full tablespoon of salt. In fact, a pound of pasta is estimated to absorb only about a quarter of that amount.

Rebecca Morris, updated by Victoria Spencer, Why you should salt pasta water, MarthaStewart.com

The estimate of a quarter of a tablespoon of salt is not explained. This would be 4.3 grams, which would include nearly 1,700 mg. of sodium. This works out to 425 mg per serving, which is not alarming but is a significant amount for one course of one meal in a day.

Culinary Writing and Publishing

“Tastes better” is an opinion delivered as culinary advice.

The culinary sources above implied there is scientific evidence that cooking dried pasta in salted water does not present health concerns for consumers. The sources have failed to identify the experimental evidence or papers that anchor their opinions. If the writers, editors and publishers understood the heatlh risks, they might have said what they knew. The culinary publishing industry has not been giving advice based on food science or medical science.

The culinary sources suggest that cooking dried pasta in salted water does not add much sodium in terms of the US National Research Council’s Recommended Daily Allowances (“RDAs”). The RDA for sodium is 2,400 mg. (or 1,500 mg. for many individuals). The legal and regulatory context:

  • there is no law against sodium in cooked pasta or adding salt to dried pasta through the cooking water; but
  • sodium in cooked pasta or salt added to dried pasta through the cooking water is not “approved” or recommended by US authorities.

The RDA is not a government standard for sodium in food. U.S. public health guidance warns about sodium in prepared, processed and cooked food and requires disclosure of sodium by the manufacturer or seller of a packaged product in precise terms.

There is no law or regulation requiring a culinary writer to explain the consequences of following a tradition, a recipe or advice on cooking. There is no RDA for culinary advice from journalists.

Web Forum

A threaded discussion in the Seasoned Advice site (“a question and answer site for professional and amateur chefs”in the StackExchange network) of the question “When cooking pasta in salted water how much of the salt is absorbed” began in 2010. The discussion includes a couple of published scientific research papers, some theories, and a little math. The references in that discussion to scientific sources:

Science

A search engine search can lead to the Seasoned Advice web forum discussion noted above. Finding other papers published in scientific journals about the salt in pasta cooking water with a search engine is not easy. Understanding or applying a paper is not easy. Food scientists writing for publication in academic journals do not explain the effects of cooking in the terms used in culinary writing. I located a paper that addresses, and seems to answer, the question, by searching the citation of the 1986 paper in Cereal Chemistry.

VTI Paper

There is a paper published in Food Chemistry in 2019: “Cooking parameters affect the sodium content of prepared pasta” (“VTI paper” – some of authors were at the Virginia Technical Institute at the time). It was based on experiments cooking one pound (454 g.) of dried spaghetti pasta, and other pasta samples in 6 quarts (1.5 gallons) of unsalted water, and salted water. The VTI experiments tested pasta made from wheat. Some pastas are made from rice or other gluten-free starch products. Some dried pasta products may have more sodium or take up more sodium from salted cooking water (as discussed in the 2006 report to the Scottish Standards Agency (noted above).

The VTI paper discusses cooking by a reference method (“Ref.” M.”): adding 36 g., 1the team used the conversion factor of 1 Tbsp = 18 g. 2 Tablespoons of table salt (Morton® iodized) to 6 quarts (1.5 gallons) tap water, bringing the salted cooking water to a boil, and cooking the pasta for 9 minutes. There were tests at several different concentrations of salt in water, listed in the table below. The team used a fixed amount of salt for a fixed amount of dried pasta in one control experiment. The VTI paper used the term “concentration of salt” of water (i.e. salinity, a specific mass concentration) in grams of salt in a liter of water (g/liter).

The VTI team did not test at the concentrations the culinary sources recommend, as such. These values are interpolated in the table below on the linear basis found in the paper (see below):

  • 1 Tablespoon of table salt, 17.1 grams (some would say 18 g.); 4.52 g/liter.
  • 4 teaspoons, 22.8 g.; 6.02 g/liter.

The VTI experiments tested for sodium in the cooked pasta:

Sodium was quantified using inductively coupled plasma spectroscopy-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) after digesting the samples using a two-day, open vessel, nitric acid/hydrogen peroxide digestion procedure

The paper reported results by sodium in milligrams divided by the mass of the cooked pasta for 100 g. of cooked pasta and for 140 g. of cooked pasta. The paper correlates experiments and data by identifying the experiments with letters of alphabet. The results of experiments A, B, G, H, I, J can be listed in a table. the results and the interpolations are ranked in the ascending order of sodium in cooked pasta:

Test and salt Salt
g/liter		mg. sodium
/100 g.		mg. sodium
/140 g.
G – unsalted0≤5≤5
B – 50% Ref. M.3.1791.2128
H – Ref. M. & rinse
pasta after cooking		6.34115162
Interpolation*: 1 Tbsp.
/gallon		4.52125.5 *176.1 *
Interpolation*: 4 tsp.
/gallon		6.02167. 2 *234.5 *
A – Ref. M.6.34176247
I – 150% Ref. M9.51267373
J – 2x Ref. M12.7350490

The VTI paper noted:

…. Dry pasta is itself low in sodium, but significant and varying sodium content results from salt added during preparation. Reducing (or eliminating) the amount of salt added when cooking pasta and/or rinsing after cooking is a simple and quantitative way to reduce dietary sodium. The purpose of salt in cooking pasta is generally agreed upon to be for taste.

The VTI experimental results supported:

… a predictive equation for sodium in cooked pasta as a function of the salt concentration in the cooking water … based on differing amounts of salt added during pasta preparation, and whether or not the pasta was rinsed.

The connection between the concentration of salt in the cooking water and sodium in the prepared pasta was linear, i.e. it graphed as a straight diagonal line in graphs in the paper. The VTI paper suggested:

The linear relationship between the concentration of salt in the cooking water and sodium in the prepared pasta … can be used to obtain a more accurate estimate of the sodium content …

This information could also be communicated to consumers as demonstrable and simple way to reduce sodium intake, by relating how much salt in pasta cooking water increases sodium, and that rinsing after cooking could reduce by 1/3 the sodium content of pasta cooked in salted water

The Culinary Sources’ Advice

The VTI team did not test at concentrations that the culinary sources recommended – 1 Tbsp. or 4 tsp. of salt per gallon of water. The results suggest that the 1 Tbsp. would add about 125 mg. and 4 tsp. about 167 mg. of sodium to 100 g. of cooked pasta.

The culinary sources are justified in saying that salting a gallon of cooking water with 1 Tbsp. or 4 tsp of salt does not make the cooked pasta very salty, and in saying pasta cooked in water with salt at those concentrations adds sodium to the cooked pasta in amounts that can be calculated as in the table above. The sodium in 100 g. of cooked pasta is less than 200 mg. Then, think about the size of serving. A serving of cooked pasta may begin as 100 to 150 g. of dried pasta, which swells in volume and gains weight. That serving of pasta may weigh 200 to 300 g. when cooked in water and may contain 350 to 500 mg. of sodium if the water has been salted to the level recommended by culinary sources.

Public Health Guidance, Flavor and Appetite

The VTI paper helps understand how much sodium a person who eats pasta cooked in salted water consumes. The paper does not prove that it is “safe” to eat pasta cooking in salted water. The health effects depend on the person, the concentration of salt, the size of the serving, and other variables.

Science-based RDAs and label warnings are not much use in preventing cooks from cooking with salt. Cooks do not often:

  • weigh or measure salt or water,
  • know, let alone understand, the sodium or salt RDAs, or
  • weigh the portions of cooked pasta.

Cooks commonly serve much more pasta than 100 g., topped with a sodium-rich sauce (highly processed and/or made with salt), accompanied by sodium-rich food.

Bread, Pizza & Salt

Pizza is a leavened flatbread, usually leavened with yeast. Like other bread, it is made with salt. A pizza made from scratch at a restaurant or at home can have more salt, processed cheese and processed meats than a person should eat.

Making pizza dough is similiar to making bread. A pizza crust can be made with flour, water, salt and yeast, and a little sugar or olive oil to enrich the dough. The dough will be a dough ball which will ferment (“rise”) and be flattened for baking. A dough ball to make a 10 inch thin crust pizza will be small, and have to be tenacious to stand up to rolling into a thin crust.

A pizza can be baked in a home oven, although no home ovens achieve the temperatures and conditions of the ovens used in restaurants.

Mark Bittman’s pizza dough recipe involves flour, water, salt, instant yeast and olive oil. His recipe uses 2 tsp. (11.4 grams) of salt, 1 cup of water (237 g.) & 3 cups of flour (408 g.) (B% hydration 58%). This recipe calls for 11.4 grams of salt in 650 g. of wet dough. The calculation of sodium per serving is not straightforward. 11.4 g of salt contains 4.56 g. of sodium (= 4,560 mg.) 650 g. of wet dough makes enough crust for 3 or 4 servings. Each serving would have 1,110 to 1,500 mg. of sodium. The RDA is 2,000 mg.

Mark Bittman recommends mixing and kneading in a food processor, which takes about half a minute, with some extra pulses. In a stand mixer, a yeasted dough can be mixed and kneaded in less than 10 minutes. He recommends letting it rise at room temperature, or more slowly in a refrigerator, before dividing, shaping a dough ball, wrapping and freezing. He suggests using a frozen ball within about a month.

Peter Reinhart has dough recipes in his pizza book, American Pie. His recipes use 1¾ cups of water (415 g.) & 5 cups of flour (680 g.) (B% hydration 61%) His recipes call for stand mixer or hand kneading – not in a food processor. He favours cold fermentation in a refrigerator. He says his doughs can be divided, shaped as dough balls, wrapped and frozen for up to 3 months.

Peter Reinhart, in American Pie, has a recipe to make 4 x 10 inch pre-baked crusts that can be kept frozen for 3 months. These are not thin crust pizzas.

Beth Hensperger has pizza dough recipes in The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook for doughs for 2 x 12 inch thin crust pizzas, or 1 x 14 inch deep dish pizza. A pizza cannot be baked in a bread machine; bread machines mix and knead dough in a Dough program or cycle. Her basic recipe calls for US All purpose flour which is has less gluten than Bread flour (or Canadian All purpose flour) and makes a less tenacious dough. This is a recipe for a chewy regular or deep crust.

RecipeFlour (Volume)Flour (US oz.)Flour g.Water (Vol.)Water g.B%Salt g.Instant yeast g.
Basic3.5 cups 16.625 4711.33 cups31567%8.6 (1.5 tsp.)5.6 (2 tsp.)

A home cook can mix dough, divide it into balls and refrigerate or freeze dough balls for future use. A recipe that uses 3 cups of flour will make enough dough for a large pizza or 2 smaller pizzas, or 4 small or thin pizzas.

Some grocery stores sell pizza dough balls. These are warmed or thawed, shaped, topped and baked at home. The Holy Napoli brand distributed by a firm in Port Coquitlam is available in local stores, occasionally. The dough ball is 300 g., and contains 1.3 g. sodium, 72% of the RDA. Salt is crystallized sodium chloride, not pure sodium. A recipe for 300 g. of wet dough will, normally, require 3.3 g. salt (a little more than half a teaspoon of table salt). The other ingredients are flour, water and yeast. I am not sure how to compare frozen dough to wet dough at room temperature. 300 g. of wet dough is a little less than 200 g. (1.5 cups) of flour and a letter more than 100 g. (less than half a cup) of water. That seems to be a normal ratio of salt to flour, consistent with other dough recipes.

Any of the dough recipes above would have to be adjusted to reduce sodium. for users with hypertension or salt sensitivity, or concerned to limit consumption of sodium. A pre-mixed dough, or course, cannot be adjusted. A pizza made from scatch can be heathier than a frozen, pre-made pizza, or pizza made with pre-mixed dough.

Frozen pizza is a dressed pizza on a partially baked crust. It is kept frozen and is baked in an oven in about 15-20 minutes in a 400-425 degree (F) oven to finish the crust and heat the pizza to serving temperature. Frozen pizzas are easily heated and baked. They are not healthier than other pizzas. A short survey of some 10 inch (25 cm.) frozen pizzas in the freezer cases of local grocery stores follows. For some of these pizzas, the calories, sodium and other food facts label ingredients are stated for a 1/4 pizza serving. The numbers here are for the whole pizza. The processed frozen pizzas are not more salty than some pizza dough recipes, but that is not saying much. I include the % of USDA RDA (which is 2,300 mg.):

BrandLineStyleCrustToppingSpecialtyMassCaloriesSodium
Dr. OetkerRistoranteThin CrustplainMargherita330 g.8401260 mg., 55% RDA
Dr. OetkerRistoranteThin CrustplainSpinach390 g.9101420 mg., 62% RDA
Dr. OetkerRistoranteThin CrustplainVegetable385 g.7601560 mg., 64% RDA
Dr. OetkerGood Baker
Feel-Good		Multigrain
Stonebaked
Spinach &
Pumpkin Seeds		Vegan350 g.720 g.1340 mg., 58% RDA

Much of the sodium found in the industrially processed frozen pizza is in the dough. On industrially processed frozen pizza, the processed cheese is abundant, and salty. They contain wheat flour unless the product is a gluten free fake pizza. There is soy bean oil, and there are mystery additives. These products are convenient, but not particularly tasty.

Zambri’s, a restaurant in Victoria sells a proprietary “Pantry” line of frozen restaurant dishes, including pizza. The pizzas are not labelled with retail nutrition/food facts labels. The pizza are larger, thicker and heavier than those above – about 580-600 g.

Some stores have Pillsbury pizza dough in a tube. The ingredient lists indicate that the dough has been mixed to bake to some thing like a frozen pizza. The oil is soy oil, and there are mystery additives.

Chiles and Chillies

Chile (Chili) Peppers

The chile is the fruit of a plant in the genus capsicum, cultivars of capsicum annuum, a South American plant that travelled to Mexico before the common era. The plant grew in Mexico, Central America, and northern South America and was introduced to Europe and Asia in the 16th century in the Columbian “exchange”. It is used in cuisine that is considered, in modern terms, to be traditional or indigenous to those areas.

Fresh and dried capsicum cultivars were used in the indigenous cooking of Mexico and Central America for centuries before the Spanish conquest. Mexican cooking uses chiles in moles and other sauces, chiles rellenos (chiles stuffed with a filling and cooked), and other dishes.

Most cultivars produce the alkaloid capsaicin. Most capsicums, including jalapenos, serranos, cayennes and Thai (Bird’s Eye) peppers are “hot”; new spicier cultivars have been developed. Capsaicin is an irritant which makes some peppers “red hot”. Capsaicin is not found in the seeds; little is found in the flesh of the capsicum fruit. It is in the white pith of the seed pod and the ribs of the fruit. The 1912 Scoville scale, based on detection of the diluted substance by tasters, is still used to assess the concentration of capsaicin although chemical analysis has superceded the 1912 method.

Many sources write chile for the capsicum fruit, and chili for stews made with chile. The English speaking inhabitants of South Asia (India) and Southeast Asia spelled the name as chillies. That spelling is still used.

Sweet or bell peppers are chiles. The bell pepper cultivar was developed in Europe early in 20th century and is widely grown and sold. The gene for production of capsaicin is recessive – bell peppers are not “hot” or spicy. Banana peppers and pimentos are mild too. Mild chiles add a sweet fruity flavour.

In pre-industrial practice, chiles could be used fresh, or dried. In the 18th and 19th centuries, processsors established methods of grinding dried chiles and storing and using chile powders and sauces made from dried chiles or chile powder. Ground spice powders made food safer and food preparation in kitchens more efficient. Powders of ground single cultivar chiles – e.g. ancho (dried ripe poblano) are available in some markets in the 21st century. In Mexican traditional cooking, a cook needed a supply of fresh or dried chiles, onions, garlic, tomatoes, and Mexican oregano (as opposed to the Mediterranean Origanum vulgare).

Black, green and white peppercorns are the fruit of the Asian piper negrum. The East Asian Sichuan pepper is neither capsicum or piper.

Allergies to bell peppers and other capsicum chiles are common, yet not well known or understood by the public. Many websites offer or share advice based on theories, some of which are or appear medical. The medical foundation of such theories is that allergies are immune responses to toxic glyco-alkaloids, or other alkaloids or proteins that may contact the skin or internal organs of humans. The theories blame substances in capsicum plants or in related plants in the nightshade family.

Con Carne

Chile con carne is a popular American stew:

Chili con carne (also spelled chilli con carne or chile con carne and shortened to chili or chilli; … meaning “chili with meat”, is a spicy stew containing chili peppers (sometimes in the form of chili powder), meat (usually beef), tomatoes and optionally kidney beans. Other seasonings may include garlic, onions, and cumin. The dish originated in northern Mexico or southern Texas.

Wikipedia (November 2021) Chili con carne

Amercan Chili is based on meat. Pork and beef are traditional choices. The meat can be ground or cut to bit sized stewing pieces. There are recipes with other meats. It is customary to brown the meat to flavour the dish. Some make chili without beans. Many use beans. The beans used in chili (pinto, black turtle, red kidney, cranberry) are the dry seeds of cultivars or varietals of the central American wild bean, phaseolus vulgaris. The beans dry naturally and are harvested as a dry grain. The dry beans are hard and have to be cooked until they are tender and “creamy”. Dry beans can vary by age and other factors, making cooking times a matter of judgment or luck. Beans can be booked in boiling water or simmered in water near the boiling point. The slow cooker was developed to simmer beans, but is losing popularity.

Meat cooked in a chile sauce – carne con chile – is/was a north Mexican dish. Rick Bayless has established restaurants offering Mexican cooking, as an advance on American regional cooking, including “Tex-Mex” Western and Southwestern cooking. Bayless provided a recipe for carne con chile colorado from the state of Chihuahua in his first book, Authentic Mexican (1987). He has chile con carne on the menu in Frontera, a restraurant chain, and has published a version of the Frontera Uptown Texas Chili. By mentioning the question about whether chili con carne was invented in Texas and ny publishing the following comment he suggested that chili con carne is not an authentic Mexican dish.

Chile con carne: detestable food that under the false Mexican title is sold in the United States from Texas to New York

Rick Bayless, in Authentic Mexican (1987), quoting and translating Diccionario de Mejicanismos

Carne con chile was adopted by non Hispanic/indigenous consumers in the southwest US as American settlers migrated into the land annexed by the US from Mexico in the wars of annexation in the 1840s. It can be prepared and presented in thousands of way. It is often served with cornbread, a baked “cake” associated with the Southern states of the US. A “Tamale pie” is chili with a cornbread topping, baked in an oven.

In the early 20th century, food scientists at the New Mexico State University recovered “heritage” peppers from indigenous peoples and started the lines of New Mexico cultivars of capsicum annuum for agricultural use.

Proprietary chili powder spice blends and sauces became popular in the late 19th century. A few brand names endured; the idea of a blended powder became dominant in the American market. The chile in chili con carne is usually a blend of powdered dried chile with other dried ground spices including cumin, oregano (often not Mexican oregano), garlic powder, onion powder and coriander In modern (late 20th and 21st century) chili competitions, cooks may use multiple branded chili powders and sauces to get a unique and pleasing effect.

The origins and authenticity of chile con carne are, on the internet, a vast cavern. There are many web pages and videos of methods, recipes, festivals and competitions. In modern times it is a stew of meat and other ingredients in a tomato sauce flavour by onion, aromatics and spices including chile.

For several years I made stews, including chili, in a slow cooker with a ceramic insert (a crockpot). I used the methods suggested by cookbooks including the America’s Test Kitchen book Slow Cooker Revolution (2011). The ATK approach was to use canned beans, drained of the can fluid, which is not appealing and assumed to be unpalatable, Considering the use of salt in canning, salty broth is normally a health concern. I have been using an Instant Pot to prepare or cook beans for the last few years, and have given up using a crockpot.

Bread

Table of Contents

Introduction

Bread is made by mixing flour and water into a dough, introducing a rising agent (historically, yeast), kneading the dough, and baking the dough:

Bread is a combination of flour and water that has been baked. Over the years, its production has become increasingly more complex. Bread is a staple food in many countries, with cultural significance. With common sayings such as “the bread winner,” it has become one of the most important parts of the world’s diet.

Bakerpedia.com, Specialties, Bread

Flour is the product of grinding and milling cereal (grain). The point of harvesting and milling grain is to preserve the starches, to be eaten and metabolized into glucose. When flour is mixed with water, starches dissolve. The starches are rearrranged by mixing flour with water, kneading dough and baking bread.

Grain and flour are NOVA class 1 unprocessed or mininally processed foods.

Unpackaged bread is a NOVA class 3 processed food, if

Processes include various preservation or cooking methods, and, in the case of breads and cheese, non-alcoholic fermentation. Most processed foods have two or three ingredients, and are recognizable as modified versions of Group 1 foods. They are edible by themselves or, more usually, in combination with other foods. The purpose of processing here is to increase the durability of Group 1 foods, or to modify or enhance their sensory qualities.

https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova

Packaged industrially baked bread is considered to be a NOVA class 4 ultraprocessed food due to the additives and the processing of ingredients:

Additives in ultra-processed foods include some also used in processed foods, such as preservatives, antioxidants and stabilizers. Classes of additives found only in ultra-processed products include those used to imitate or enhance the sensory qualities of foods or to disguise unpalatable aspects of the final product. These additives include dyes and other colours, colour stabilizers; flavours, flavour enhancers, non-sugar sweeteners; and processing aids such as carbonating, firming, bulking and anti-bulking, de-foaming, anti-caking and glazing agents, emulsifiers, sequestrants and humectants.

A multitude of sequences of processes is used to combine the usually many ingredients and to create the final product (hence ‘ultra-processed’). The processes include several with no domestic equivalents, such as hydrogenation and hydrolysation, extrusion and moulding, and pre-processing for frying.

The overall purpose of ultra-processing is to create branded, convenient (durable, ready to consume), attractive (hyper-palatable) and highly profitable (low-cost ingredients) food products designed to displace all other food groups. Ultra-processed food products are usually packaged attractively and marketed intensively.

https://world.openfoodfacts.org/nova

Resources

Basic Technique and Science

Most people purchase bread made by industrial bakers from grocery stores. Some shop at bakeries.

Many people have kitchens and oven and could bake bread if they purchased flour and other ingredients and had time, and knowledge of technique and science. It isn’t rocket science but it is a specialized activity. Bread baking may have been a part of the education of students in home economics courses. Persons who work in bakeries may have taken courses in vocational educational institutions or learned from experienced bakers in work experience.

Publishers have published some texts and educational aids and many recipe books, but few books that can assist a beginner with basic technique. A useful book, in the Amazon Kindle store: Bread Science, by Emily Jane Buehler, published by Ms. Buehler, as Two Blue Books in 2006 and as a Kindle e-book in 2014, republished in 2021 in a 2nd edition. Ms. Buehler worked in a coop bakery, and taught community courses before she wrote this book. She researched the science of grain, milling, dough and baking in the professional journal collections of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She presents the science of gluten and fermentation, the practical technique of handling dough, an explanation of bakers’ percentage, and a discussion of the techniques of making and using preferments – sponges and starters.

Web

YouTube has videos that demonstrate technique and what dough looks like as it is worked. Finding them is not easy, as search tools drive users to sift through many search returns.

Lesaffre’s Red Star brand has some useful videos on its channel:

Ingredients

Flour Milling Standards

Whole wheat and bread flour weigh the same amount per unit of volume. Whole wheat flour, pastry flour and American all-purpose flour have proteins to make gluten but not quite enough. Bread flour milled to US and European standards (and Canadian All-Purpose) at 12.5% has more of the proteins that bond to form gluten. Gliadin and glutenin are insoluble proteins in grain and in flour. The proteins are found in wheat flour, and also can be extracted by milling, processed as vital wheat gluten (“VWG”) powder, and mixed into bread dough:

Consisting of mainly gliadin and glutenin, wheat gluten is unique among cereal proteins based on its ability to form a cohesive and viscoelastic mass. This rheological property makes it a dynamic material that is able to grow and keep the gasses within the dough during extended fermentation periods. The viscoelastic nature also provides the oven spring (increase in height due to the expansion of gasses) that we see in the oven.

….

The addition of VWG generally increases the dough mixing time and fermentation time. As more protein solids are added, more water is needed for complete flour hydration.

Due to its cohesive and viscoelastic properties, its main function is a dough strengthener. It is also a film former, binder, texturizer, fat emulsifying agent, processing aid, stabilizer, water absorption and retention agent, thermosetting agent, and a flavor and color binder.

Vital gluten can absorb almost twice its weight in water (140–180% water). The quality of dry vital gluten is estimated with the Brabender farinograph or Chopin Alveograph. The breadmaking quality of VWG is also assessed through standardized baking tests.

Bakerpedia.com, Articles, Vital Wheat Gluten

When water is added to flour, these proteins bond into strands and sheets of gluten “a composite of storage proteins … found in wheat, barley, rye, oats, related species and hybrids … “. Gluten gives elasticity to dough, helping it keep its shape and often gives the final product a chewy texture.  Gluten relaxes in time which lets the dough flow and rise.

Gluten forms when water is added to wheat flour. Bakers knead dough, stretching and folding it on itself, repeating the motion for several minutes. This structures the gluten. A baker can pause after mixing or start kneading, or pause during kneading. Kneading structures or pulls the gluten into a network of micro balloons. The dough should be viscous (tenacious and elastic) to hold together, but extensible to stretch, and to flow. A professional baker will probably use a mechanical mixer; many home bakers may have one. A mechanical mixer or stand mixer uses mixing arms, a paddle or a spiral dough hook in a circular or elleptical motion. A mixer has a range of speeds.  The baker uses a slow speed to mix the ingredients and a higher speed to knead.

Rising Agents

A rising agent (leavening) creates bubbles in the dough that create the bubbled texture of the “crumb” inside the crust of the baked loaf. Until chemical leavening agents were developed, bread was leavened by adding baker’s yeast. Yeast consumes some of the starches – it ferments, creating gas, which is trapped in gluten in the dough, which makes the bread rise, after the dough has been kneaded. Bakerpedia explains, condensing a number of complex biochemical processes:

When yeasted dough ferments rises and increases in volume, and flavor is developed.  Yeast converts starch in flour into sugar, carbon dioxide and ethyl alcohol. CO2 gas is trapped by gluten proteins in the flour which causes dough to rise. Fermentation results in a light and airy crumb.

Bakerpedia.com, Vital Wheat Gluten

The yeast propogates.  Propogation and fermentation accelerate until the yeast cells run out of starch, or are killed off by high temperature. The dough rises in 2 or 3 stages: bulk fermentation, and intermediate and final proof. Dough is knocked or punched down to release gas at the end of the bulk fermentation, and folded when the loaf is shaped. The dough rises again in the baking pan and springs when yeast warms up after the pan goes in the hot oven, before the heat warms the dough and kills the yeast.

Commercial bakers use chemical leaveners for some bread.  Home bakers use baking powder and baking soda for corn bread, soda bread, cakes and other baking.  Baking powder is baking soda mixed with cream of tartar. Kraft Foods Magic Baking Powder does not provide Food Facts on the labels of small jars in Canada.  The published information is that 1 tsp has 300 mg. of sodium.  Substitutions for baking powder involve 1/4 tsp of baking soda plus some acid (e.g. vinegar, cream of tartar) for each tsp baking powder. Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate.  It has 1,259 mg. of sodium per teaspoon, which explains the food facts for baking powder. The science of substitution for baking soda and baking powder is to use potassium bicarbonate, which is the key ingredient of Featheweight – not an widely available (i.e. in grocery stores) product.  It is available as a supplement but has a list of side effects and do not use if taking medication warnings. Please Don’t Pass the Salt has recipes for quick breads, and suggestions on low sodium “baking mixes”. “Natural” products that that might trap CO2. Some recipes for some baked goods suggest that some natural products may trap CO₂ e.g. whipped egg whites.

Salt

Mark Kurlansky’s excellent book Salt: a World History (2002) tells of the use of salt to bake bread in Egypt (3,000 BCE),  The production of salt may have started about 8,000 years ago. The right ratio of flour to salt and yeast, among other things, means a loaf that will rise on time, and not overproof or balloon. The loaf should spring in the oven and crown to form a dome.

Salt is part of the process for most bread sold by grocery stores and bakeries large and small. Bread is high in sodium, as an effect of the baking process. 

Salt is a standard and necessary ingredient in most formulas and recipes. Salt:

  • has a chemical effect on the taste buds (Lallamand Baking Update, Volume 2, No. 6);
  • affects the development of gluten. It affects chemical bonds in amino acids in proteins in flour that has been exposed to mixed with water. It makes the gluten more tenacious and elastic;
  • controls yeast which affects fermentation. Fermentation affects flavour but it also affects rise, which affects the size of the loaf and the production line.

A few bread styles, such as Tuscan bread, are made without salt. 

Salt can be reduced, with a reduction in the amount of yeast. Some books and internet pages eliminating salt but incorrectly list the same amount of yeast that would be used if there was salt in the recipe! This will may bake or collapse. In a bread machine, the dough will balloon and may or collapse before it overflows the pan.

Every reduction in salt has to be balanced with a reduction of yeast. Please Don’t Pass the Salt has recipes for yeasted breads and a note on the general adjustment for yeasted bread recipes. Artisan bread baking writers suggest that adjusting the salt in formulas leads to unsatifactory results  – e.g. Peter Reinhart, Artisan Bread Every Day (Ten Speed Press, 2009) at p. 15 suggests not reducing by more than 10%.  Salt and kneading affect gluten.  It is easy to get to reduce salt to 50% and 33% reduce the salt added to the mixing machine when dough is mixed. These reductions are difficult for industrial bakers. Changes in salt will affect the gluten, affecting texture, and storage of bread, as well as fermentation and taste.

The most precise way of measuring is by weight.

GoalReductionUse SaltUse Yeast
50%50%50%50%
33%67%33%33%
The accepted rule of thumb is reducing proportionately by weight to maintain the same percentage

Mixing and Kneading

Machines

Modern professional bakers work with hundred of kilograms of flour and water. Professional bakers have control over how long to mix/knead, rise (ferment/proof), bake, and over oven temperature. Ingredients are mixed and kneaded in large industrial mixers, fermented, put into pans and put into ovens, baked, turned out and packaged. The dough goes into pans in small irregular lumps. It has to rise and flow to fill the pan, spring when pans go in the oven, but not spring above the limited headspace of the pan. Professional bakers may use 10-15 minutes of “intensive mixing” – the mechanical mixing of yeasted white flour dough was dominant in professional bakeries for French loaves until Raymond Calvel devised the hybid style in the 1960s. Intensive mixing develops gluten in white flour rapidly. Home bakers with stand mixers use slower speeds due to limitations of machinery (see the stand mixer review by America’s Test Kitchen in print and YouTube) or to use a hybrid, modified or improved mixing method. Overmixing is a risk for professional bakers using industrial mixers. Machine mixing can stretch dough too much or too often, breaking the gluten strands. An overmixed dough cannot hold the gases, and will not rise.  Intensive mixing may affect a loaf with effects short of the complete failure caused by overmixing. Home bakers can have the same problem. A variety of mixers are available to the home baker:

  • Food processors can mix dough, although a food processor might only handle 3 cups of flour, and has one speed – very fast.  The mixing time may be less than a minute.  Some food processors have a dough speed and/or special blade to mix dough. The risk of overmixing dough in a food processor is well recognized. 
  • A home stand mixer can handle several cups of flour, at low-medium speed settings.  The power output of a Kitchen Aid stand mixer with a 5 quart bowl may be 325 watts.  Larger stand mixers may output 800 watts.  A Bosch Compact Kitchen Machine may output 400 watts into its dough hook in its stand mixer configuration. They have to be used at the right settings and for a short time.

Baker’s Percentage

Professional bakers and some home bakers express ingredient lists or recipes in baker’s percentage (B%) to use consistent processes to manufacture a consistent product. Professional bakers may use 2 pounds of salt and .77 pound of instant yeast per 100 pounds of flour.  The B% for salt is 2%; the B% for instant yeast with most loaves made with bread flour is .7% but B% can vary. It may be over 1%. A yeast B% of .7% in one loaf works out to .3 ounces = 8.5 grams = 8,500 mg. salt per 3 cups (15 ounces) of flour.  A normal loaf of bread weighing 1 ½ lbs. (a bread machine medium loaf) has 3,400 milligrams of sodium per loaf – several hundred milligams per slice or serving. Home bakers work with small amounts of salt and yeast. Bread machines use very small amounts for single loaves.

Measurement of salt and yeast by weight is desireable for home bakers and bread machine bakers. Few home bakers have scales precise enough.

Conversion? The great majority of recipes refer to standard ground table salt. For table salt: 1 tsp = 5.7 grams or .20 oz.  Some fine crystal table salt on the market in the US weighs 7 grams per teaspoon.  I do not pay attention to this information unless the recipe I am referring to has used a coarse or fine salt:

  • America’s Test Kitchen/Cooks Illustrated The Science of Good Cooking (2012) lists several brands of kosher salt and sea salt and compares them to table salt, suggesting that Morton’s brand is the standard for table salt at 1 tsp = 7.15 g.
  • Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (Ten Speed Press, 2001) says on p. 28 that 1 tsp of table salt = .25 oz which converts to 7 grams. 

The size of the salt crystals affects solubility, which can affect the distribution of salt in the dough, and effect of salt on yeast.  However  a gram of kosher salt works as well as a gram of table salt for baking bread.

Some sources say for instant yeast: 1 tsp  = 3.15 grams. Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (Ten Speed Press, 2001) says on p. 28 that 1 tsp instant yeast = .11 oz which converts to 3.12 grams. It is hard for home user to verify the weight of a teaspoon of instant yeast with home tools and methods. Instant yeast may vary slightly depending on the manufacturer, time and how the yeast has been stored and handled,

Yeast measurement for bread machines

Table of Contents

Yeast for a Panasonic machine

Low salt

I had tried, with the machine I had before the Panasonic SD-YD250 bread machine (acquired in 2016), to use less salt than the recipe says. For a reduction of salt by 50%, I followed the rule of thumb of reducing salt and yeast equally by weight. For low sodium I cut yeast in equal proportions by weight1This is a rule of thumb which has be adjusted based on the recipe and the machine, according to experience!. The principle is to reduce yeast by the same percentage as salt as suggested in The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook (“BLBMC“) at p. 290 and by the May 2016 post on the Please Don’t Pass the Salt bread page. 

I used 50% of salt and 50% of the instant yeast for SAF instant yeast in a BLBMC recipe. If the recipe says 1.5 tsp salt, as many recipes did, I calculated salt by weight as 1.5 x 5.7 g. = 8.6 g, and I used 4.3 grams salt. If the recipe said 2 tsp. instant yeast, as many recipes did, which weighs 6.2 g. I would use 3.1 g.

There has to be a lower limit to this method – all bread needs some yeast or leavening to rise.

Problem

When I started to bake in the Panasonic SD-YD250 bread machine, I had a problem. Medium loaves (1.5 lb.), both low sodium and regular recipe, based on the BLBMC filled the  pan, and had airy, weak crumb; some ballooned or cratered/collapsed/imploded. The fermentation was excessive for the amount of dough

Panasonic Manual Recipes

Panasonic’s recipes (in the manual; see its online recipe resource pages) call for 3.1 g. instant yeast (1 tsp.) to 417 g total flour weight for a medium (1.5 lb.) loaf; in baker percentage 0.7%. This is half the amount of yeast for loaves that size in BLBMC recipes:

  • 1 tsp (instead of 2 tsp or more ) for 3 cups of flour for a medium loaf;
  • 1.5 tsp. for 4.375 cups of flour for extra large loaves.

Another clue – the Panasonic SD-YD250 will bake an extra large (2.5 lb) loaf that may take more than 4 cups of flour but the yeast dispenser does not hold much more that a tablespoon. And an observation – set for medium loaves, basic bake and whole wheat cycles, the Panasonic SD-YD250 mixes for 3 minutes, kneads and rests to rise before baking. The knead time of 20-30 minutes is a little longer than for many machines. The rise phase is 2 hours, more or less, depending on the size of the loaf. The rise is longer by about 25-30 minutes than the rise in other machines.

Bread baked in the Panasonic SD-YD250 bread machine does not need as much yeast as recipes from sources other than the Panasonic manual. The main differences between the Panasonic and machine and older bread machines are:

  • Gluten formation, and
  • Fermentation:
    • longer “rise” periods,
    • programmed heating during fermentation periods – the baking pan is warmed by the element, turning the baking space into a warm proofing box.

The long rise in a warm space allows the yeast to produce more gas. A small amount of yeast, given time and good conditions, leavens more dough,

Less yeast

I was able to use BLBMC formulas for white, whole wheat, and multigrain formulas requiring 2 tsp. instant yeast (6.2 g.) for a medium loaf (a formula with 3 cups or 15 oz. flour +/- by weight) by adjusting the yeast to 1 tsp. (3.12 g.). This produced loaves that were properly inflated.

This adjustment works for almost any recipe not specifically written for a Panasonic machine:

  • (BLBMC formulas have different amounts of SAF instant yeast and “bread machine yeast”. Ignore the amount of “bread machine yeast” in a BLBMC formula and use the amount for SAF instant yeast);
  • Weigh the yeast and salt; know the correct conversion factors:
    • 1 tsp of instant yeast weighs 3.12 or 3.15 grams, and
    • A recipe refers to conventionally ground table salt; 1 tsp weighs 5.7 grams;

I note the BLBMC/recipe amount of instant yeast. I calculate a “Panasonic” adjustment by halving the yeast stated in the BLBMC. For my Panasonic, this became the amount of yeast for the recipe. This reduction prevented the overflow/balloon problem and mixed dough that baked into bread. I did not change salt from the recipe in testing this adjustment in yeast.

I was not able to determine that 50% is absolutely the right conversion factor. It leavened the dough and prevented the ballooning loaves.

Other machines

Bread machines differ. Recipes for bread machine loaves cannot necessarily be used in different machines without making adjustments.

Salt and Yeast

I continued to bake with 50% of the salt in a recipe. As noted, my approach had been to halve both salt and yeast.

Where I had cut yeast to the low instant Panasonic number, I would cut this again to match the salt reduction. This meant I would use only 25% of the BLBMC or recipe yeast to bake 50% salt bread in the Panasonic. This worked cutting salt and cutting yeast that much, but began to affect results.

The rule of cutting yeast for the machine and cutting again by half when I reduce salt by half works reasonably well if I leave more than 1.4 g (half a teaspoon) of instant yeast for 3 cups of bread flour. If I cut salt more, I will have experiment to find the amount of instant yeast that will ferment and make a dough that flows and rises. I will have to adjust yeast differently when I eventually replace the Panasonic machine.

Nutrition Labels

Table of Contents

Labels

Sodium

The idea of a low sodium diet is to consume less sodium.

Context

In the view of corporate executives in the capitalist economy, product labels are part of the narrative of a product – it is space paid for by the manufacturer .  Industry likes to control the narrative.  Miller Lite, in commercials “tastes great” and is “less filling”. Campbell Soup advertises its products as full of healthy ingredients.  The chunky versions could be eaten with a fork. Canned soup is high in sodium, which is a problem.

The legal definition of food adulteration may be limited to contamination or the use of unsafe ingredients; the law requires  food companies to label cheese flavoured products and to admit when processed cheese is not a cheese product.

American manufacturers and sellers of goods and services assert free speech rights in advertising as commercial free speech.  Mandatory labelling is compelled commercial speech. Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio, 471 U.S. 626  a 1985 decision of the United States Supreme Court, established a constitutional standard where the government can mandate commercial speech, in the form of disclaimers, as long as the information is “purely factual and uncontroversial”, serves a related government interest, and is meant to prevent consumer deception. The lower US federal appellate courts have addressed the content and context of mandatory disclosure:

  • fluorescent light bulbs contain mercury – proper [National Electrical Manufacturers Association v. Sorrell, Kassel, (Vermont) 2001];
  • graphic depictions of cancerous organs on cigarette packages – improper; [R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. v. FDA 2012];
  • country of origin of meat – proper [American Meat Institute v. US Department of Agriculture 2014];
  • jewellery is sourced with blood diamonds – improper [National Association of Manufacturers v. SEC. 2015]

Wine fraud may involve forgery, unsafe ingredients or misleading presentation.

In Europe in 2017-2018, the regional variation of ingredients became a food scandal – the product is not what was expected by the buyer:

Nutrition Facts

Disclosure of the ingredients of packaged food on the package or a labels is required in the USA and Canada. The disclosure is a quantified ingredient list on the package or label, a table headed “nutrition facts”. This table is on almost everything that has been processed and packaged. It is not on raw meat, fresh fruit or fresh vegetables.

It is not a list of all ingredients. To get a complete list, it is necessary to have access to the databases kept by the government agencies that store the information. The table on a product label will identify sodium in almost anything that has been packaged. However, the Nutrition Facts table is not always clear.

Cheeses vary in sodium content, according to the manufacturer’s method of production. The type of cheese is a factor, as is the manufacturer’s recipe. Much cheese is sold in wedges, wheels or blocks. Retailers selling cheeses as deli counter products may not use Nutrition Facts labels. A consumer, if the product is labelled, has to translate the data into “slices” and estimate sodium.

A Nutrition Facts table lists values per “serving”. The manufacturer chooses the serving size. Some serving sizes are nearly standard. Cheeses conventionally choose a 3 cm cube, a cube 3 cm x 3 cm x 3 cm, (9 cubic cm), and are required to state the weight of the serving. The food brand Kraft lists a cube of the process “cheez” product Velveeta at 30 grams It is sold in extruded blocks weighing 450 grams, 15 cubes, with 450 mg. sodium per cube.

Most manufacturers of soy sauce (a high sodium processed condiment) list the sodium in mg. per tablespoon. The American organic food producer, Braggs labels its Liquid Soy Seasoning as containing 320 mg. sodium per 5 ml. – a mere teaspoon. A tablespoon of Braggs Liquid Soy Seasoning contains 960 mg. sodium – about average for a soy sauce.

There is a second number  – a percentage of the United States Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) Recommend Daily Allowance (“RDA”) per serving. The RDA percentage is useful for some decisions but the RDA is not a prescription or a guaranteed safe allowance – it is high for many people. 

The label can identify sodium in packaged food cooked into a prepared meal.

Labelling of ingredients of restraurant meals is resisted by the food processing and food service industries.

Sodium Searching

Resources

Some authors put the the Food Facts information in recipes in books and magazines.  

The main data repository is the USDA collection of Food Composition Databases. It is comprehensive and powerful but does not seem to have a consumer friendly search interface. There are other data sources on the web. For instance, there are online converters, cooking aids, and Calorie Counters.

Searching for “calorie” or ingredients in a search engine brings up a results including some other tools to search for nutrition facts. Information sources may  promote a fad or a personal theory. Buyer beware.

These resources are scientific and fact based:

Methods and tips

Finding the sodium in a dish or meal prepared at home involves finding the sodium in each ingredient of each dish. Calculating the sodium in one serving of a soup made with fresh ingredients required adding up all the sodium in the ingredients, estimating the number of servings in the pot and dividing the sodium. 

Where is the sodium in prepared food?

  • bacon, ham, sausage or prepared meat;
  • packaged soup, broth, canned vegetables,
  • processed sauces;
  • cheese;
  • toppings or dressings

Pouring off the juice from canned goods, if that is possible, reduces sodium.  For recipes with canned, packaged or pre-cooked ingredients the most effective approach is

  • giving up when a recipe requires a can, or even a cup of a branded soup or sauce – that’s a sodium hit in itself;
  • salt is added to almost anything for flavour according to recipes and kitchen practice. It is unnecessary to add salt to the cooking water boil potatoes or cook rice;
  • if a recipe calls for a sauté in bacon, use oil;
  • use no added sodium ingredients – checking the label for any sodium.   The Eden Organic lines of canned beans are zero sodium ; other canners have introduced no sodium lines;
  • no salt added is not sodium free; a no salt added product is a better choice than the regular product. For instance, no salt added broth has far less sodium than the regular product in a product line;
  • Frozen green beans, peas and corn are low in sodium, but not zero sodium;
  • Time and energy considered, cooking broth and dry beans may be less expensive and help keep out sodium.

Campbell Soups No Salt Added Chicken Broth has sodium at 40 mg. per serving.  RDA percentage 2% (1.7% rounded up). Campbell Soups No Salt Added Vegetable Broth has sodium at 20 mg. per serving  RDA percentage 1% (0.86% rounded up). the serving size is 150 milliters or 2/3 of a cup. A 900 milliliter (4 cups) tetrapack of chicken broth has 240 mg. of sodium.The RDA percentage makes it easy to identify the no salt added product as a better choice than the regular choices in the product line.  Calculating the sodium per serving of a soup or stew takes a spreadsheet with numbers for each ingredient and a sense of the serving size.

For salad dressing one manufacturer may use a smaller serving size which make the sodium, by RDA percentage, seem lower. For mayonnaise, the serving size seems to be standardized at 1 tablespoon.  But 1 tablespoon may mean 13 or 15 mililiters, and products vary:

  • Kraft Real Mayo 70 mg. 3 %
  • Kraft (regular) 77 (or 70) mg. 3%
  • Kraft Caloriwise Real 90 mg. 4 %
  • Kraft Miracle Whip Regular 115 mg. 5%
  • Kraft Miracle Whip Caloriwise 140 mg. 6%
  • Hellman’s Real 90 mg. 4%
  • Hellman’s 1/2 The Fat 135 mg. 6%
  • Hellman’s Organic 90 mg. 4%
  • Neal Brothers Organic (250 ml glass jar, Canadian, artisinal and expensive) 85 mg. 3%

At some point I may put this information in a table that will be part of this post or a future post.

Mayonnaise has a bad reputation with health inspectors.  Mayonnaise made with raw eggs can be a food safety hazard.  But packaged processed mayo is not necessarily the unsafe ingredient. It becomes unsafe when food made with the mayo is left at a termperature at which bacteria grows in food.

Squeeze bottles hamper measuring and invite overly generous portions.

Condiments can easily be overserved – It is easy to consume several “servings”.  An olive in a Greek salad, or on a pizza, or in a martini adds a few hundred mg. sodium.

There are several pepper sauces (e.g. Frank’s Red Hot), with 180 mg. of sodium per teaspoon.  “Traditional” McIlhenny Tabasco Sauce has 35 mg. per teaspoon.  Other Tabasco Sauce brands (e.g. Louisana Gold) are up to 175-200 mg. per tsp.

Cookbooks and Salt

Dietary and culinary theories abounded – and still persist, that salt is adds flavour and should be used in cooking nutritious and tasty food. Salt has been added to food as necessary preservative e.g. ham, sausage, olives, cheese, soy and other sauces. It has become a normal practice to put some salt into any dish, or the water to prepare boiled ingredients.

Some culinary books say that consumers can avoid the wrong processed ingredients and avoid processed foods. That’s true, but that advice may be accompanied by advising home cooks to use salt, as suggested in a recipe, in preparing meals.  Also to brine certain foods to make them cook better. The writers, presenters, and publishers of the  Cook’s Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen family are an example. This sends contradictory messages about processed food, prepared food, home cooking and eating to satisfy taste and psychological needs:

  • It supports home cooking and food preparation with less reliance on processed ingredients
  • It appears to encourage safe and wise use of salt
  • It is a rationale for trying a salted item for one’s own pleasure or as  comfort food, which is also a rationale for departing from a program.

Recipes from some sources include nutrition facts.  General recipe books generally do not provide this kind of information.   General recipes may involve processed ingredients; these are worthless in a low-sodium diet unless a no sodium alternative can be substituted.

Some culinary books recommend measuring salt by weight, because it is more precise and because of the variations in the densities of salt (oarse, kosher, table, sea salt etc).  Table salt is not uniform.  Recipes assume table salt, at 6 grams per teaspoon. Cook’s Illustrated/America’s Test Kitchen published the weight of a specific brand of iodized table salt (Morton Iodized Salt) in The Science of Good Cooking (2012) at p. 113 as over 7 grams. The extra gram of salt is 400 mg. of sodium.

Continue reading “Cookbooks and Salt”

Salt

Table of Contents

Open-ended

This post is dated 2018. It has been written to be updated.

Salt

Salt

Salt (sodium chloride) is a chemical agent used to cook or process food. Saltiness is regarded as one of 5 main tastes. (Scientists have not, as of 2018, identified a distinctive taste receptor for salt.)  Sodium is an essential nutrient, but consuming more sodium than the minimum has no health benefits.

Mark Kurlansky’s excellent book Salt: a World History (2002) tells of the uses of salt to brine or pickle soybeans and vegetables in China (>700 BCE), to cure hams by the Celts (Gauls and Germans) and Romans (>100 BCE),  the fermentation of fish to make Garum (Greek, Phoenician, Meditaranean, Roman fish sauce >900 BCE ) and oriental fish sauces ( China >2000 BCE ). The production of salt may have started about 8,000 years ago. Until the invention of canning and refrigeration, salt was used to preserve food.  Salt was and still is used to control or kill bacteria or yeast to preserve food (salting, cure, brine or pickle).  Some foods were to heavily salted they had to be soaked to make them palatable. Salt is use also to manage the activity of “good” yeast and bacteria.

Modern Food

Food processing includes:

  • harvesting, drying & milling raw plant products including grain, beans, vegetables and fruit;
  • raising, slaughtering and butchering animals;
  • processing agricultural products to commodies used to “make” food – e.g. flour, powder and syrop;
  • combining processed commodities to manufacture food product including products that can be served after adding water, or warming them with appliances;
  • packaging a product for transportation and sale
  • (pre)cooking food into heat and serve meals.

Sodium and Health

Sodium

Sodium is an essential nutrient but excessive sodium consumption is a health risk.

The upper limits for sodium intake, in milligrams, per day:

These numbers are not stated in ranges for body type, or weight.  The limits are stated as a single number for an “average” adult and a second, lower number for persons diagnosed with hypertension, or defined by age or other statistical risks. The 2,300 milligram figure is the sodium in 5,700 mg. (5.7 grams) of salt – about a teaspoon (the unit of volume). Exceeding the upper limit is risky and harmful.

Other sodium compounds added to processed food: sodium bicarbonate, sodium citrate, sodium phosphates, sodium pyrophosphate, monosodium glutamate.

Salt, Sugar, Fat

Processed foods used chemical additives – for instance as a binding agents – e.g. to make starch and water into a pudding. In Salt, Sugar, Fat (2013), investigative journalist Michael Moss looked at those ingredients as additives, and at aspects of the food industry:

  • financial and market constraints; investor and corporate governance
    • selling more product is the main goal;
    • input costs are already controlled; the costs of getting goods in front of customers is the main production cost,
  • marketing and social engineering:
    • the quasi-science of flavour,
    • consumer expectations: convenience, flavour, texture;
  • product development and financial engineering:
  • the politics of getting the food industry to state the contents of its products.

Michael Moss reported on his interviews with personnel at Cargill, a major supplier of salt to the food processing industry in his 2010 New York Times article “The Hard Sell on Salt” and in Salt, Sugar, Fat. Without salt:

  • The Cheez-It was not palatable. The colour faded. The crackers became sticky when chewed, and the mash packed onto the teeth. The taste was medicinal;
  • Corn Flakes tasted metallic;
  • Eggo waffles evoked stale straw;
  • The butter flavor in the Keebler Light Buttery Crackers, which have no butter, disappeared;
  • Many products, including meat products, develop what food industry people called Warmed Over Flavour, described as cardboard or damp dog hair.

Salt, Sodium and Public Heath

Public health campaigns in the 1980’s concentrated on avoiding sprinking salt on prepared food by the (with a salt shaker/salt grinder).  Then public agencies set limits and compelled food processors to put salt on product labels.  Disclosure of sodium in product labels for processed foods is required by law in North America and Europe. Campaigns moved on to changed limits, better labels, more information, labels on menus, etc. 

The food industry wants to identify whatever it produces and sells as safe, nutritious, and authentic or wholesome. The food industry considers labelling and public health information represents the foot of government on the throat of free enterprise. In part it promotes scepticism about the science that says excess salt is bad. Michael Moss looked resistance from food manufacturers and processors in the Salt section of his book Salt, Sugar, Fat. Marion Nestle has provided commentary on the Food Politics web site.  (Search Salt in the search bar or search for posts tagged Salt).  Scientific American published one article in July 2011 “It’s Time to End the War on Salt” discussing the inconclusiveness of clinical trials.  A week later, Scientific American published an inteview with Marion Nestle who said:

But if you do a clinical trial where you try to put large amounts of people on a low-salt diet, you just don’t see much difference between the people who say they eat a lot of salt and the people who say they don’t eat a lot of salt. In clinical trials the relationship doesn’t show up. Two reasons: One that it’s impossible to put a population of people on a low-salt diet. Roughly 80 percent of the salt in the American food supply is in foods before people eat them—either in processed food or in restaurant food. Because so much salt is added to the food supply and because so many people eat out, it’s impossible to find a population of people who are eating a low-salt diet. They basically don’t exist.

… There’s a proportion of people in the population who are sensitive to salt—if you lower their intake of salt, then their blood pressure goes down. There’s another (probably larger) percentage of the population who doesn’t respond. They are people who can eat as much salt as they want and still their blood pressure is low.  So you have this curious anomaly where whenever you do a clinical trial you get these complicated, difficult-to-interpret results that don’t show much of an effect. But everybody who works with patients who have hypertension think they do better [on a low-salt diet].

Scientific American, July 14, 2011, The Salt Wars Rage On: A Chat with Nutrition Professor Marion Nestle

The food industry has created some products that are made without adding salt and other sodium compounds.  It’s a niche – another diet option. “Healthy” (whole grain, high fiber, low-fat, and organic)  products often are as salty as anything else, or more (e.g. low-fat mayonnaise in a product line may have 150-200% the sodium of the regular mayonnaise). Reduced” or “low” sodium statements by manufacturers are generally mere puffery. “No added sodium” generally means no sodium, but not always.

Living without salt means learning to taste differently.  It does not mean that everything is going to be bland.  People get habituated to the amount of salt they normally consume:

A group of young adult subjects was placed on self-maintained, low sodium diets for 5 months. Taste responses to salt in solutions, soups, and crackers were determined both during the 2 months preceding diet initiation and during a 5-month period when subjects lowered their sodium intake. Taste responses were also determined in a control group with ad libitum salt consumption throughout the same period. Perceived intensity of salt in crackers increased. The salt concentrations of maximum pleasantness in soup and crackers fell in the experimental subjects but not in the control subjects. These results demonstrate that the preferred level of salt in food is dependent on the level of salt consumed and that this preferred level can be lowered after a reduction in sodium intake. The implications of these findings for the maintenance of low sodium diets are discussed.

Bertino, Beauchamp & Engelman The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 36, Issue 6, 1 December 1982, Pages 1134–1144

Also “Effect of dietary sodium restriction on taste responses to sodium chloride: a longitudinal study”, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 44, Issue 2, 1 August 1986, Pages 232–243

High Sodium Foods

Food products high in sodium:

  • Bread;
  • Sandwich spreads, condiments and salad dressings;
  • Processed meat, cold cuts, charcuterie;
  • Cheese;
  • crackers,
  • pickles, olives,.
  • Processed (flaked/puffed or shaped and toasted) breakfast cereal;
  • Tomato juice, vegetable juice and tomato-clam (some very high);
  • Processed spaghetti sauces and tomato sauces (very high);
  • Pizza – bread topped with tomato sauce, cheese, and whatever else (most very high);
  • Canned soups (monstrously high);
  • Soy sauce, hoisin sauce and fish sauce; miso paste (monstrously high).

Hypertension

I had a stroke in January. I was unconscious for a few days, hospitalized for a couple of weeks and off work for a few months.

I was hypertensive.

I thought I had been cooking healthy i.e. not using more salt than a recipe required etc.

My blood pressure dropped with medication during my recovery. My blood pressure got into a good range when I eliminated salt by switching to no sodium added broths and vegetables in cooking,baking bread in a bread machine on a lower salt formula for the recipes I was using and avoiding fast food, processed meats, cheese and processed (factory cooked) products.