Hey, what's up? This is Ramses Job. And I go by the name, Q Ward. And we'd like you to join us each week for our show Civic Cipher. That's right. We discuss social issues, especially those that affect black and brown people, but in a way that informs and empowers all people. We discuss everything from prejudice to politics to police violence, and we try to give you the tools to create positive change in your home, workplace, and social circles. We're going to learn how to become better allies to each other. So join us each Saturday

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Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of IHeartRadio.

Hey, Brain Stuff.

Lauren Vogelbaum here.

With the holiday season upon us, I wanted to talk about a common but slightly mysterious

baking ingredient, cream of tartar.

Despite its name, it isn't creamy.

It's not made of dairy at all.

It's also not used in tartar sauce. It's actually

a byproduct of the wine industry, but we'll get into that later. Okay, cream of tartar is a dry,

mildly acidic powder, most commonly used in baking, but also in candy making, cleaning products,

and other kitchen jobs, like whipping up fluffy eggs.

It's like having lemon juice or vinegar in a powder format, but it's flavorless.

In baked goods, cream of tartar is employed as part of chemical leavening agents.

Leaveners are the stuff you add to help make baked goods nice and light and

fluffy. In general, these are compounds that will create carbon dioxide bubbles in your dough,

giving it a physical lift and expansion. Then the heat of the oven sets the dough around those bubbles.

This is what's happening in yeast-phrased dough. The yeasts are microorganisms that

produce carbon dioxide. But sometimes you don't want to muck around with yeast because it takes

a couple hours to work, and that's where chemical leaveners come in. Modern chemical leaveners are

made by combining baking soda, aka sodium bicarbonate, with an acid, and then getting them wet.

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