18

I have seen some recipes for cookies which include lye (water boiled with ash) among the ingredients. Does anyone know what the purpose is? Is there any other ingredient that can replace lye?

Catija
  • 16,300
  • 8
  • 54
  • 86
Siato
  • 331
  • 1
  • 3
  • 5
  • 11
    The cookies are a lye. – James McNellis May 02 '11 at 04:35
  • 1
    @James I like the pun! Well I have a Greek recipe for vegan cookies made with olive oil, sugar, flour, sesame and water boiled with ash. The texture of the cookies is great. They are not too hard but I guess this is because they have no eggs or anything sticky to bind them together. – Siato May 03 '11 at 11:06
  • could you come back to us with what you decided to do in the end and how it worked out for you? – Todd Chaffee May 03 '11 at 14:40

5 Answers5

23

First of all, lye is not "water boiled with ash". You might be thinking of potash, which used to be used as lye, but virtually all food-grade lye today is sodium hydroxide.

In terms of its function, it largely raises the alkalinity (pH). Baking soda does too, but sodium hydroxide is far more potent - let's just say you don't want to get any on your hands by accident.

The reason some recipes use lye is that alkalinity is a major promoter of the Maillard reaction, which is responsible for the crisping and browning you see in many baked goods - most notably pretzels. I haven't seen cookie recipes using it but I imagine that those recipes would produce very crisp and hard cookies - not my cup of tea but maybe that's what you want.

The only ingredient I know of that you can use instead is baking soda, but I wouldn't call that a replacement, more like a substitution. It will work the same way, but in the end you'll have something much softer and less browned.

There is actually another substance that is in between the pH of sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) and sodium hydroxide (lye), and that is sodium carbonate AKA "washing soda". It's listed as a food additive (E500) but it is rather difficult to find in food-grade forms. As its name implies, it's more commonly used as a detergent. However, it would be a better substitute than baking soda due to its higher pH.

One can make food grade sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) from food grade baking soda, sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3), by baking it an oven spread out on a cookie sheet at 350° F for one hour; baking longer won't hurt. This drives off water and carbon dioxide to form food grade washing soda (sodium carbonate) which increases the pH more than baking soda.

Here's the reaction for the above process:

2NaHCO3 ---> Na2CO3 + CO2 + H2O

Aaronut
  • 54,811
  • 24
  • 191
  • 303
  • 8
    ? Lye is most certainly wood ashes leached in water (often hot). Lye means "to wash", or "warm bath". Commonly, but not limited too, sodium or potassium hydroxide. In the quite parts of the world Lye is still often made from wood ash when used for cooking or olive production. We boil our local corn in ash water to make our version of masa (nixtamalization). Commercial Lye is mostly used for soap production as it's easier and expected to be safer. Yes in the USA/China etc Lye will be industrial sodium hydroxide – TFD May 01 '11 at 23:09
  • 1
    @TFD it's great that you have your local traditions and all, but "food grade" means pure and that means it's been produced by one of the [various chemical processes that have been used for over 200 years](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_hydroxide#Production). Certainly if we're talking about *buying* it off the shelf then it's going to be from a chemical company, not homemade. – Aaronut May 01 '11 at 23:15
  • 5
    In some Asian countries you will find bottled ash water (Lye) from specific tree varieties. Yes it's made in a factory, but it is as simple as the home made stuff. Lye is used in pulled (kungfu) noodle dough. Specific trees are meant to have special properties? – TFD May 02 '11 at 00:05
  • 8
    @Aaronut, lye can most definitely come from wood ash. We are talking about **food** here, a large part of which grows in dirt. Since when did "food grade" mean made in a chemical factory? For me what mother nature produces is a lot purer than what comes out of some polluted factory. [Google gets over 29,000 results on how to make lye from woodash](http://www.google.co.uk/search?sclient=psy&hl=en&source=hp&q=how+to+make+lye+from+wood+ash&btnG=Search). Let's not forget there are other cultures with other ways of doing things. The majority of the world does not buy food off a shelf. – Todd Chaffee May 02 '11 at 01:37
  • 5
    @Todd, this would be really super interesting if the question actually had anything to do with how lye is made. It doesn't. The question is about recipes using lye which *clearly* is referencing the "off the shelf" variety - unless you're going to tell me that people who are too poor to buy food off a shelf are buying cookbooks off shelves or better yet, getting recipes off the internet. Now please check your political baggage at the door, thanks. – Aaronut May 02 '11 at 04:33
  • 4
    @Aaronut just where does it reference the "off the shelf"? Todd and I and referring to the OP we are referring to your post, especially "First of all, lye is not "water boiled with ash"." which is obviously very wrong. We also use cook books, the Internet, live in a democracy, grow our own olives, and make our own Lye, what's wrong with that? It's called using local resources. It should be strived for, not put down – TFD May 02 '11 at 08:34
  • 5
    @Aaronut if the question had nothing to do with how lye is made then why did you correct the question in your very first sentence? Since your answer contained incorrect information I corrected it. There are many reasons for growing your own food rather than buying it off the shelf, other than being poor. Like for freshness or the joy of hand making stuff or learning. After all, no real need to cook these day - you can just buy pre-made food in a box. Please check your own political baggage at the door. – Todd Chaffee May 02 '11 at 14:04
  • 1
    @TFD: I believe I was rather explicit in saying that potash was historically used as lye; however, it is absolutely correct that any professional chef or chemist you speak to today will define lye as pure sodium or potassium hydroxide and not home-boiled ash, same way they'll define gelatin as sheet or powdered gelatin out of a box and not the result of a chicken stock that's had all the water boiled out of it. There's nothing *wrong* with making your own (as long as you follow proper safety guidelines) and I never said there was, but the question stated an obsolete definition. End of story. – Aaronut May 02 '11 at 22:12
  • 3
    @Todd, that's a very nice try, but boxed convenience foods are foods, not additives, and they usually contain many more ingredients than the homemade varieties. Lye is an additive, and if you want consistent results when cooking, you want your additives to be as pure as possible. You're clearly trying to push an agenda when you spout demonstrable nonsense like `For me what mother nature produces is a lot purer than what comes out of some polluted factory` and I'm asking you politely not to continue that behaviour. This site is for answering questions, it's not a soapbox. – Aaronut May 02 '11 at 22:15
  • 5
    @Aaronut, my comment now has almost as many votes as your answer, so I guess you're the only one that finds a problem with it. How is an opinion "demonstrable nonsense"? I clearly started the sentence with "For me". I wasn't trying to push an agenda, just trying to demonstrate that your narrow vision of how to define cooking might not be the only answer and might not apply to everyone. Belittling local traditions as somehow not being "food grade" is just as political as what I said. – Todd Chaffee May 02 '11 at 23:07
  • Potash is commonly sold in the christmas season in Germany for gingerbread making, so it is not really a globally obsolete ingredient.... – rackandboneman Mar 20 '17 at 09:29
18

Alkaline solutions are used in different qualities in doughs. I am afraid that you mix something up here, so I don't know which you mean.

One use is to enhance the Maillard reaction, which Aaronut already described. This is indeed done with lye. But nobody is incorporating lye into the dough (this would be quite dangerous). Instead, the formed pieces are immersed in boiling lye before being baked. This gives them a very intensive brown crust, but it isn't crispy, it is soft. The texture is like glossy magazine paper. It also gives a subtle taste of its own. I have only encountered this used with yeast dough, like pretzels or breadrolls. I haven't seen it used with cookies. I think that this is what Aaronut's answer refers to. As you don't have lye at home, it is acceptable to immerse your pretzels into a very concentrated solution of baking soda. The pictures look similar, I've never done it myself.

The second thing you could mean: as Aaronut pointed out, ash boiled with water and filtered isn't lye, it is potash. It isn't used for the Maillard reaction, or not primarily for that. A very refined version of it is incorporated into the dough itself, including cookie dough, as a primitive leavening method. Because of its alkalinity, it reacts with sour elements of the dough. But this is quite a crude method (you never know the concentration, plus, you risk off-tastes and maybe coloring from whatever parts of the ash didn't get filtered well enough). So it fell in disuse since pure alkaline salts (like baking soda and amonium bicarbonate) became available. If you really have a recipe which requires it, it is probably from before the 19. century. And given the progress of cookie recipes since then, I'd just use a modern recipe and forget the potash. It is easier than figuring out the correct substitution ratio. Unless you want to recreate the taste as it used to be, but then no substitution would to, you'll have to secure the real thing from somewhere (probably untreated wood in your own fireplace + ancient filtering methods).

rumtscho
  • 134,346
  • 44
  • 300
  • 545
10

Another reason for strong alkalis in cooking is to quickly breaks down the flour gluten, instead of having the dough sit around for a long time to 'soften' it

This is used in hand pulled noodles and in cookie dough that is extruded or piped

Common bottled cooking Lye water in supermarkets is mostly potassium carbonate and some sodium biphosphate. In powder form it is referred to as 速溶蓬灰 (Kansui powder). For noodles they typically use a 1:200 to 1:100 ratio

When using Lye make sure it doesn't get in direct contact with fats or oils or you will have a soapy taste. Mix it with water and other ingredients first, then add fats or oils

As an alternative you can buy the "Natron" mineral. It's mined in Egypt and many other parts of the world, including the UK. It has been used as a food additive for centuries. Sold like packs of salt, contains around 80% sodium carbonate

TFD
  • 25,107
  • 5
  • 48
  • 90
4

To further answer the part of your question about replacing lye, you might also be able to use culinary lime from Anson Mills (and apparently some Walmarts according to the article). I'm pretty sure it is made of calcium hydroxide, also known as "cal" to Mexicans.

Concerning the purpose of lye in your recipe, in addition to the affect it would have on the dough (as already explained by others), it may also have a nutritional purpose.

According to an article on wikipedia about Hominy, Cherokees made hominy grits by soaking corn in a weak lye solution obtained by leaching hardwood ash with water

When combined with unmilled corn, it makes niacin (a B vitamin) and possibly other vitamins more available to the body. Although wheat flour, especially whole wheat, contains some niacin, I don't know if the nutritional benefits would translate, especially if it has already been milled into flour.

Could you please let us know what the instructions were? Curious to know if it goes into the dough (as perhaps a softener) or on the outside (to make it more crisp) and if it is a traditional recipe referring to wood ash lye or something more recent.

Todd Chaffee
  • 949
  • 1
  • 5
  • 16
  • For the downvoter, how about an explanation? The post answered the question with information not included in any other posts. – Todd Chaffee May 03 '11 at 09:54
  • I didn't downvote - the first paragraph of your answer is helpful. The rest does seem a little tangential, though, seeing as how we're talking about cookies, and nutrition isn't normally high on the list of concerns when baking those. It's an interesting point about the bioavailability nevertheless. – Aaronut May 03 '11 at 15:08
  • 1
    The OP asked for the purpose of the ingredient. Don't see how any plausible explanation to the purpose is tangential, whether or not it's on your list of concerns when making that recipe. – Todd Chaffee May 03 '11 at 15:43
2

For moon cakes, lye water helps keep the baked dough soft and make it brown nicely when baked.

Hao Bo
  • 21
  • 1