Baking in Space For Sci-Friday!
How is baking in space different than on Earth?
I have been baking quite a bit of bread lately, and today being Sci-Friday got me thinking about baking at different elevations here on Earth, and then I thought, what would it be like to bake a loaf of bread in space?
Baking at high elevations can be more challenging than baking at sea level.
For Example, if you owned a bakery on a mountaintop your baked goods would rise more quickly than at a lower elevation due to the lower air pressure. They would also fall quicker which results in flat cookies and gummy bread, that’s bad baking.
But what is it like to bake cookies in a zero-gravity environment, like on the International Space Station (ISS)?
In 2019 they tried just that, baking cookies in space. How did it go?
Well, cookies baked in zero gravity can take five to six times longer to cook than on Earth.
For reference, my chocolate chip cookie recipe bakes for 11 minutes at 350 degrees at sea level or just slightly above.
That means if I bake my cookies in space they would be baking for just around an hour or slightly longer.
The first cookies that were baked on the ISS in 2019 were undercooked, but the second cookie that was baked for 75 minutes released an aroma.
In my experience, cookies, and most baked goods release an aroma a few minutes before they’re completely cooked but an aroma is a good sign.
The most successful cookies were baked for 120 minutes and left to cool for 25 minutes. The second successful cookie baked for 130 minutes, and was left to cool for 10 minutes.
Over 2 hours to bake a cookie? On Earth I can get quite a bit of cookies baked in that amount of time.
Cooking in general is more difficult and time-consuming in a zero-gravity environment. On the ISS astronauts use a water gun to rehydrate dehydrated meals and fill water bags.
They can also use a small convection oven to heat irradiated meals by blowing hot air over them. Convection ovens down here can cut cooking time by about twenty-five percent. That’s just one reason I prefer a convection oven over a conventional one most of the time.
Cooking in space seems like it would lend itself well to Instapots and air fryers, they are small, compact, and they get the job done, but I am sure most of the food that is eaten in space is freeze-dried, rehydrate-able food products.
If I ever get the chance to bake a loaf of bread in zero-G I am going to jump all over that, it would be cool to take on that kind of challenge, trial and error would be required for sure, but I think I could overcome the change in environment and conquer the challenge.
This has been Sci-Friday, and if you haven’t checked out these Sci-Friday contributors you should do yourself a favor and go do so right now.
Very cool question to ask and answer today!
Very interesting idea! I suspect we’ll be hearing more about this sort of thing in the coming years.