Baking mix
A baking mix is a powdered mixture of ingredients for a dough . Baking mixes exist for many types of baked goods , but most commonly for cakes and bread . As a convenience food , baking mixes should save time during baking and ensure consistent quality.
Contents and packaging
Practically every baking mix consists of flour, salt and raising agents . Depending on the recipe, there are also sugar and other ingredients. Baking mixes are dry and can be kept for a long time at room temperature in the absence of air. Accordingly, the liquids (water or milk), fats (e.g. butter) and eggs belonging to the recipe have to be added to these baking mixes.
As an industrially manufactured product of the food industry for consumers, baking mixes have been offered as portioned and packaged branded products since the middle of the 20th century. There are also commercial baking mixes as preliminary products for bakers.
history
The first semi-finished dry baking mixes were made in England during the Industrial Revolution . The "self-raising flour" invented by the baker Henry Jones (1812-1891) from Bristol is considered to be the first baking mix. Jones' mixture consisted of finely ground flour mixed with the preservative tartaric acid and, after storage for two to three days, the leavening agent soda was added. There was also salt and fine-grain sugar ground from sugar loaf . Only drinking water had to be added to the flour before baking. Jones applied for a patent for his invention in England in 1845 and in the USA in 1849. The first publication in the Lancet emphasized the use on long voyages in order to be able to offer fresh bread instead of hard ship's biscuits. At the same time, Jones invented an oven for installation in ships, with which his baking mix should be processed. After ten years of unsuccessful attempts to convince the Admiralty of the use of his invention for the Royal Navy, Jones sent a letter to this effect to every member of the House of Commons in 1855 . Shortly thereafter, "Henry Jones self-raising flour" was introduced by the Navy.
In the 1920s there were other providers in the USA . Baking mixes were popularized in the USA by General Mills with the Betty Crocker brand , which came into stores and increasingly supermarkets in 1947. The first type was Ginger Cake , followed by Gingerbread Cake , Cookie Mix , Devils Food Layer Cake and Party Layer Cake . In the United States, Nebraska Consolidated Mills launched its baking mixes for cakes under the Duncan Hines brand in 1951. In 1956, Nebraska Mills sold the successful baking mix business to Procter & Gamble . Even today, Duncan Hines is one of the leading brands in baking mixes in the USA. The former third competitor Pillsbury was taken over by General Mills in 2001. However, the Pillsbury brand (“Moist supreme”) still exists for baking mixes.
When the American bakery mix market began to stagnate in the early 1960s, General Mills planned to expand into Japan . Japanese consumers bought baked goods almost exclusively outside the home; Western goods were popular. The only obstacle to the spread of baking mixes appeared to be the lack of an oven in typical Japanese cuisine. Therefore General Mills developed a special baking mix for preparation in the rice cooker , which was sold under the artificial name Cakeron , a pseudo-Anglicism . After initial sales successes, sales collapsed due to a lack of repeat buyers. In customer surveys it turned out that leftover cooked rice was stored in the rice cooker, which was therefore rarely free for baking. The baking mixture also left an aftertaste in the rice cooker, so that the next serving of white rice tasted like vanilla, for example. In combination with the cultural symbolism of the untouched, white rice, which seemed threatened by foreign influence, such a failure was inevitable. General Mills discontinued the Japanese line of baking mixes. Baking mixes did not catch on in Japan until the 1990s.
In the GDR, the Kathi company sold bags of ready-to-bake cake flour for the first time in 1953. The slogan was: "Ready to bake immediately with egg and fat mixed together." Even today, Kathi is the market leader for baking mixes in the new federal states. In 1970 , Kraft launched the first baking mixes on the market in West Germany, followed by Dr. Oetker . In Germany as a whole, Dr. Oetker is the market leader with almost two thirds of sales in the baking mixes segment, followed by Unilever ( Mondamin brand ), Ruf and Kathi (all data as of 2004) with market shares of around 10% to 15% each . According to a survey by AC Nielsen, the total market for baking mixes in Germany in 2002 was EUR 125 million (given in producer prices and not including Aldi ).
literature
- Karal Ann Marling: Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book . In: As seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s . Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1994, ISBN 0-674-04882-2 , pp. 202-240.
- Laura Shapiro: Something from the oven: Reinventing dinner in 1950s America . Viking, New York 2004, ISBN 978-0-670-87154-4 .
- Samuel A. Matz: The chemistry and technology of cereals as food and feed. Springer, New York 1991, ISBN 0442308302 .
Web links
- Something Eggstra - Did adding eggs afterwards really lead to a breakthrough in baking mixes?
Individual evidence
- ^ Ludwig Wassermann: Baking mixes for bread and biscuits . Brochure No. 16, Baked Goods News : News from the Knowledge Forum Baked Goods , ZDB -ID 2499824-2 . ( Download ( Memento of the original from July 22, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note .; PDF; 95 kB).
- ^ Samuel A. Matz: The chemistry and technology of cereals as food and feed . New York 1991, p. 433. ( US Pat. No. 6,418 )
- ↑ Prepared Flour for making bread at sea, & by the addition of water only . In: The Lancet . (October 11, 1845), p. 409.
- ^ Neil Hanson: The Custom of the Sea . Doubleday, New York 1999, ISBN 0385601158 , p. 63.
- ^ Sherri Liberman: American Food by the Decades . Greenwood Press, Santa Barbara 2011, ISBN 9780313376986 , pp. 101-102 .
- ^ Laura Shapiro: Something from the oven . New York 2004, pp. 72-73.
- ^ Gary A. Knight: International Marketing Blunders by American Firms in Japan: Some Lessons for Management . In: Journal of International Marketing , Vol. 3, No. 4 (1995), ISSN 1069-031X , pp. 109-110.
- ↑ Arnd Zschiesche , Oliver Errichiello: Kathi - the inventors of the baking mix . In: Success Secret East . Gabler, 2009 ISBN 978-3-8349-1615-0 , pp. 134-138, doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-8349-8294-0_16 .
- ↑ Bake, bake cakes ... ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: brot + backwaren , No. 1 + 2/2004 , ZDB -ID 2186806-2 .
- ↑ "Kathi [...] with a turnover of [...] 16 million euros. […] In 2002, [Kathi] was able to increase its share of sales for baking mixes in Germany […] to 12.8%. ”With the rule of three, corresponds to a market size of EUR 125 million. Vanessa Liertz: The queen of baking mixes . In. Wirtschaftswoche from March 27, 2003.
