Deer horn salt may be familiar to you from Christmas baking. Here we tell you how to use the leavening agent and what risks it entails.
What is deer horn salt?
Hirschhorn salt is a leavening agent that makes your cookie or gingerbread dough fluffy. It is a food additive that must be labeled with the number E503 in finished products. Hirschhorn salt is a chemical leavening agent, which also includes, for example, baking powder, potash, and baking soda.
Hirschhorn salt is a mixture of the ammonium salts ammonium bicarbonate, ammonium carbonate and ammonium carbamate. If you heat staghorn salt in the oven, the ammonium salts decompose into the gases ammonia and carbon dioxide. Some of these gases remain in the pastry dough, creating small air bubbles and loosening the dough.
Hirschhorn salt owes its somewhat curious name to its traditional origin. It was originally obtained from deer antlers. Deer antlers are particularly rich in nitrogen, the basic structure of ammonium salts. Nowadays there is a chemical process instead, in which ammonium chloride, calcium carbonate and charcoal are heated together.
Since deer horn salt does not contain any animal ingredients, it is suitable for vegan diets.
Where can you use deer horn salt?
Deer horn salt is particularly popular at Christmas time, as baked goods made with deer horn salt have a very long shelf life. It is particularly suitable for flat pastries that should expand more in width than in height.
Hirschhorn salt is therefore best suited for:
Gingerbread
shortcrust pastry
Spekulatius
Springerle
honey cake
American
However, you should never use deer horn salt for high cakes. On the one hand, the dough rises less with deer horn salt, and on the other hand, a larger amount of ammonia remains in tall doughs. Ammonia smells unpleasantly pungent and can cause symptoms of poisoning in the body. In flat doughs, on the other hand, the ammonia is almost completely expelled in the oven.
As a general rule, one gram of deer horn salt per 100 grams of flour is enough to loosen the dough.
What are the disadvantages of deer horn salt?
A major problem with staghorn salt is that it promotes the formation of the probably carcinogenic substance acrylamide. Acrylamide is formed at high temperatures in the oven as part of the Maillard reaction, in which sugar and proteins gelatinize together. Basically, the darker the baked goods, the higher their acrylamide content. You should therefore only bake your pastries until they are golden brown and not too dark.
Baking soda is an alternative to deer horn salt. The disadvantage of baking soda, however, is that, unlike staghorn salt, it has a slightly bitter taste of its own. Hirschhorn salt, on the other hand, gives baked goods a characteristic flavor that many find pleasant.
You don’t have to do without deer horn salt for your Christmas cookies. Avoid breathing in the ammonia-laden air created in the oven. Also, avoid baking your cookies dark brown. Then you are on the safe side.
