This post was written by Peter DeCraene, a 2021-22 Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow at the Library of Congress.
As winter sets in and holidays approach, my mind turns to the comfort of baking. When I have not had the exact ingredients a recipe called for, I have sometimes improvised substitutions. Changing flavorings was not a problem, but altering the chemistry of the recipe led to rock-hard cookies or cakes that overflowed their pans and left burned splatters in the bottom of the oven.
I quickly learned that the raising agents in dough, like baking soda, baking powder, or yeast, are definitely not interchangeable. When I saw this trademark registration, for “Horsford’s Self-Raising Bread Preparation,” my curiosity was piqued, and as I started to notice and think, I wondered what my students might see in the item, and how I might engage them with it.