An American company named Diamond Crystal Salt Co has come up with a new Fine Kosher Baking Salt which the company claims can deliver superior taste and results. The fine-cut salt, its makers claim, dissolves, mixes and blends faster and more evenly into batters and doughs than traditional table salt, which is why it's thought to be more baking-friendly.
Also Read: How To Do Away Extra Salt In Your Food
The salt comes with a helpful conversion chart which explains that ⅜ teaspoon of 'baking salt' equals ¼ teaspoon of regular kosher salt. Kosher salt is a popular ingredient in baking because it has a clean taste and a unique texture, which is coarser than regular salt so it can enhance the flavour and texture of baked goods.
A super-fine kosher salt has all these qualities along with superior blendability. However, does baking need a salt dedicated to it, especially since many classic baking recipes actually call for table salt? Let’s find out.
Kosher Salt vs Table Salt, Which One Do Bakers Swear By?
It's common knowledge that bakers swear by regular table salt when it comes to making delicate sponges when the dry ingredients must be sifted to break up any clumps in the flour. Table salts contain potassium iodide and an anti-caking agent that helps prevent them from clumping.
While kosher salt may be too unrefined for baking, baking salt that's too finely cut can be prone to overmixing, hence affecting complex batters like brownie batter which needs to be handled carefully.
Maldon, the famous British gourmet salt, favoured by chefs Jamie Oliver and Delia Smith for baking, is in fact, a coarse finishing salt, which has sizeable particles and is famed for its natural crunch. Knowing Tik Tok food culture, the newly introduced baking salt, which is possibly the first of its kind may just create a new market altogether for over-fine salts, designed particularly for baking purposes. This hype, however, is nothing new. The trend of luxury salts has seen an uptick in the recent past.
The Long Trend Of Creating Baking Salts
A few months ago, another American salt company called Jacobsen & Co. introduced their Disco Di Sale salt disks. These salt disks contain exactly 10 grams of compressed Italian fine sea salt so you don't have to improvise how much salt the pasta water really needs when it's boiling. Although it may sound too much, chefs across the world gave the product their seal of approval.
New York-based chef David Chang who owns the noodle bar chain Momofuku, also introduced a series of salt seasonings, dedicated to savoury cooking. The salts were classified as savoury, spicy and tingly and promised a concentrated umami punch for grilled meats, stir-fries, noodles etc.
Chang revealed that he did exhaustive tasting tests of different ratios of salt to water and noticed that when a dish is perfectly seasoned, it simultaneously feels like it has too much and too little salt. He called this the ‘saltiness paradox,' which influenced his range of seasonings which are curated for specific tastes. So, there’s really no telling if baking salt is poised to become the next trend which fascinates the culinary world, even if chefs have been baking without it just fine.