Ep 1. Soggy Bottom Science: Great British Bake Off
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Our first episode of Small Screen Science looks at the Great British Bake Off. We explore the science behind baking the perfect Victoria sponge or sourdough loaf, speak to Bake Off contestant Yan Tsou about using maths to make the perfect pie, and join food acoustics specialist Dr Megan Povey to find out how the crunching and crackling sounds that crisps and chocolate make play a big role in how much we enjoy them.
It is a TASTY trip to the studio this week; Emma’s baked a loaf using Yan’s famous sourdough starter ‘muvver’, and Karen’s turned up to record with not one, but four different bars of chocolate*. We tuck in to test the ‘snap’ sounds made by chocolate bars with different cocoa solid contents and watch out for the cooling in the mouth sensation described by Dr Povey in the episode.
* If you want to play along with our experiment, you’ll need four bars of chocolate: a cheap option, a more expensive bar, a 70% cocoa and a 90% cocoa bar.
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Meet our guests
Yan Tsou (Yanny Bakes)
Yan Tsou, a biomedical scientist at the Francis Crick Institute in London, is perhaps better known as a charming and friendly contestant in the 2017 Great British Bake Off. Who, by the way, bakes incredible savoury pies…
Yan recently featured in an article in Nature.
T: @Yannybakes | I: Instagram
Professor Megan Povey
Megan Povey, Professor of Food Physics at the School of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Leeds, is an expert in food acoustics whose work has highlighted the importance of sound in the appreciation of food.
Physics World recently wrote an article about Megan, her life and her work.
Soggy bottom blogs
Episode Photo Gallery
We travelled to London to meet Yan at the Francis Crick Institute, Emma tried making sourdough, Yan made chicken katsu curry pies for the podcast, and Emma’s mum made an excellent chocolate ganache…
Episode References (if you fancy some extra reading)
Cheng, E. (2016) The maths of mince pies [online] Available from: http://eugeniacheng.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/cheng-mincepies.pdf
Connelly, A. (2010) The science of cake. The Guardian [blog] 9 June. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/science/blog/2010/jun/09/science-cake-baking-andy-connelly
Farrimond, S. (2017) The science of cooking: Every question answered to give you the edge. London: Dorling Kindersley.
Leslie, E. (1857) Miss Leslie’s new cookery book. Philadelphia: T. B. Patterson. Available from: https://archive.org/details/misslesliesnewco00lesl/page/21/mode/2up
I’m embarrassed to say my Victoria sponge cakes fall decidedly flat, even with my A-level in Home Economics. What’s going wrong? It turns out there are many possible reasons why I fail to get a rise, so how can I use science to improve my baking?