I bet you have a great amount of questions about everything around you. Have you ever wondered how your parents or family members are able to make the fluffiest pancakes or the most delicious soup? What if I told you that all of your favorite foods involved science?

Lets look at the different ways science can be seen when you cook and bake.

Hmm... lets talk about biscuits and gravy first. How do we create something that is warm, has a fluffy texture, and is a solid which may consist of an array of ingredients?

The different components found in pancakes are either liquids or solids.

Solids- Flour, sugar, baking powder, salt, baking soda, cold butter

Liquids- Milk (you can substitute this with Buttermilk; where its tart taste is produced by lactic acid bacteria that ferments lactose, a sugar found in milk)

Homemade Biscuits Recipe

Ingredients:

2 cup of flour

1 cup cold butter cut into equal sized cubes

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 teaspoon sugar

Approximately 3/4 cup of milk *may need more or less

Directions:

1 Preheat oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit

2 Mix the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar together in a bowl

3 Then use 2 forks to mash and mix the cold butter into the dry elements

4 Slowly mix in milk and use a rubber spatula to mix , once mixed pat into a rectangle and fold it over itself, then pat out again and repeat 3-6 times. Use a series of light pats to the dough to bring together

5 Roll out the dough until it is 1 inch thick, then cut into squares or use a circular object that has sharp edges to cut them into circles (ex small glass)

6 place biscuits onto a metal cookie sheet lined with either aluminum foil or parchment paper and place them into the oven for about 10 minutes, or until they are a visible golden brown.

Now lets look at the recipe on the previous page. Notice how the ingredients list has specific amounts of each component listed. If you were to exceed the amounts of the items that you include in the mixture then the biscuits might tilt more towards being unappetizing and not suitable for consumption. Essentially any variation in the dough could alter the biscuits, possibly creating uneven, abnormal, or even brittle biscuits. Follow a recipe in the same way you would follow and conduct a lab or experiment.

The next step in the recipe is to turn on the oven to an exact temperature. Now the temperature provided in the recipe is in Fahrenheit and if you live in another country/regions you would have to change it to Celsius or Kelvin. Now lets look into the way in which the biscuits will cook and how various things in the environment can alter the apparent outcome.

Lets first look at the way in which the biscuits will cook. The oven cooks food through what is called convection, where there is a transfer of heat through a fluid

(liquid or a gas) by the movement of the molecules. This type of cooking allows for an even distribution of heat to cook the food from the outside.

Once the oven is on it is time to gather and mix all of the ingredients. Make sure when gathering everything do not exceed the capacity that you can carry. So that you do not drop any of the accumulated items during transport to a location where you will have an abundant amount of space.

You do not want to work in a narrow space because it will be too hard to roll out the dough to the correct thickness in a confined space, the diameter of the dough needs to be large enough to have an even thickness of a 1/2 inch. It is also important that you do not over mix the dough, if you do it will become too elastic and will look like a dense boulder.

In order for the biscuits to become light and fluffy the butter needs to stay cold through out mixing the dough. Butter can contain both water and fat, the fat coats the gluten proteins and helps to prevent formation of structure. When baking at normal baking temperatures, water creates steam, which is hotter than the boiling point of H2O. By using cold butter you are able to lower the amount that can absorb into the dry ingredients, which creates layers within the dough. Allowing the butter to create pockets of air mass, due to the steam that is formed by heating the butter, which helps the biscuits to rise.

Once the biscuits have fully cooked serve them immediately or store them in the fridge. If you want to reheat these biscuits you can place them in the microwave where they will be warm and soft. The microwave is an appliance that cooks food through radiation(Food does not become radioactive), energy transmitted in a form such as rays, particles, or waves. If you make a large volume of the recipe you can place one portion of the uncooked pre-cut biscuits into the freezer. Making sure to keep them separated until they freeze fully, or use squares of parchment paper or wax paper to create a barrier between each biscuit. This way the level of stress that you put on the frozen dough will lower the rate of its capacity to split through the abrupt action.

In order to cook the biscuits from frozen it would normally be best to thaw them out before baking, but you can bake them frozen. The biscuits would technically taste fine, ranging from things that vary the duration of baking, the surface not getting golden brown, and biscuits might look similar where the altitude of frozen biscuits are not as high as the

fresh ones would be.

Biscuits fresh out of the oven

Country Gravy

Ingredients:

3/4 cup flour

1/2 cup vegetable oil

salt and pepper to taste

4 cups milk

*you can substitute the oil for fat drippings of bacon and/or sausage to make the plain gravy heartier and to amplify its taste.

Directions:

1 If adding sausage or bacon cook the meat first, taking it out once cooked. (leave the oil/fat in the pan)

2 Then add the flour to the pan/saucepan and whisk until combined. Let the flour and fat mixture cook for a few seconds, but do not let it turn too dark.

3 slowly add the milk in a steady stream, whisking the liquid to combine.

4 After the liquid is combined let it simmer for a little while, then add the salt and pepper to taste.

5 If adding meat, go ahead incorporate the meat into the gravy., allowing the meat to steep in the gravy adding more flavor.

*gravy will thicken more as it cools, so do not cook for too long

**if it is too thick add more milk

Gravy is something so simple, but can also be one of the hardest things to learn, of course when it comes to biscuits and gravy, biscuits are harder to master. When beginning the gravy make sure to use some sort of fat, such as butter, oil, or the fat cooked out from bacon or sausage. When the fat and the flour aggregate together they compose what is called a roux, which helps to thicken sauces and soups. The lighter the color of a roux the less it will thicken, while the darker the roux it(meaning it is cooked till brown or dark brown) the more it will thicken foods. In order for the roux to be made, the flour must not accumulate in one area of the pan but must dissolve fully into the fat. The percent of fat used and the amount of flour added should always be near the same amount. While cooking the roux bubbles may form but will eventually collapse or rupture, once the roux has cooked for a little while you can add the milk. The milk should be added slowly so that the delicate roux will have the benefit of thickening the milk . During this phase it is important to let the liquid condense and boil, mixing it constantly.

When cooking the gravy on the stove the cooking is done through both conduction and convection. when the pan is warming up on the stove and when you cook the meat it is considered conduction. When you begin to boil the gravy, it is cooking by convection. Since you use milk to create this recipe it will only keep in the fridge for at least a few weeks, or else the gravy will go bad.

The biscuits and gravy can be eaten by themselves, or you can eat them with eggs and potatoes for breakfast. If you wanted to eat this for lunch or dinner you could add some meat such as chicken and add some vegetables such as asparagus.