**Baking with Aluminum Pans**

When it comes to baking, the type of pan used can make a significant difference in the outcome of your baked goods. In this article, we will explore the effects of different pans on the baking process and provide some tips for choosing the right pan for your needs.

Aluminum pans are commonly used in baking, but they can also be prone to cracking. This can happen when the pan is exposed to sudden temperature changes or when it is not properly seasoned. However, even though aluminum pans may crack, they can still produce good results. To minimize the risk of cracking, it's essential to ensure that your pan is well-seasoned and that you handle it with care.

In terms of heat transfer, aluminum pans are a bit better than expected. While they are not as efficient as other materials like glass or copper, they can still conduct heat relatively well. This makes them suitable for baking delicate pastries like macarons. However, when compared to thicker aluminum pans, they perform slightly worse due to their thinner construction.

On the other hand, glass pans excel in terms of heat transfer, but this also comes with a trade-off. Glass pans can be slow to heat up and may require more time in the oven to achieve the desired temperature. This is because glass has a higher thermal mass than aluminum, which means it takes longer to warm up.

Finally, there's the air-gapped tray, which uses silmat on one half to slow down heat transfer and an air gap on the other for slow heat release. While this setup may seem counterintuitive, it can actually produce good results in certain baking applications.

**The Benefits of Baking Soda**

In recent years, baking soda has gained popularity as a natural remedy for various health issues, including reducing pesticide residue on fruits and vegetables. A study was conducted to test the effectiveness of baking soda in breaking down pesticides. The study involved soaking apples in a solution of baking soda and water for eight minutes. To the researchers' surprise, the baking soda solution was able to remove 94% of the pesticide residues from the apples.

While this study may seem promising, it's essential to note that it was conducted on a specific type of apple and involved soaking them in a controlled environment. The study did not account for the presence of other pesticides or the actual amount of residue left on the produce after washing. Furthermore, the researchers only tested two types of pesticides, which may not be representative of all the different pesticides used in agriculture.

**Conclusion**

When it comes to baking with aluminum pans, there are some key considerations to keep in mind. While they can still produce good results, it's essential to handle them with care and ensure that they are well-seasoned. On the other hand, glass pans excel in terms of heat transfer but require more time in the oven to achieve the desired temperature.

As for the benefits of baking soda in breaking down pesticides, while the study may have shown promising results, it's crucial to understand its limitations and not apply the findings to real-life situations without further research. In general, washing fruits and vegetables thoroughly in water is still the most effective way to remove pesticide residue.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enWelcome to How To Cook That I'm Ann Reardon and this is an episode of debunking where we test  viral videos from all over the Internet to see if they are real or fake. Speaking of real or  fake let's start with this first clip from Five Minute Crafts where they're showing you how to  test if your food is real or fake they have all different ice creams and they're shining a UV  light or a black light onto them I'm assuming those are supposed to be all different brands  of ice cream and then the last one is glowing green so they say that it contains vegetable oil.  According to the Australian food standards and it's similar all around the world ice cream is  defined as a sweet frozen food that is made from cream or milk and other foods and is generally  aerated and if we scroll further down you can see it says it must contain no less than 10 percent  milk fat. Now some manufacturers will swap out that milk fat or cream for vegetable oil because  it's generally cheaper but if they do that they can't call it ice cream they can only call it a  frozen dessert. Now that you know that you might actually start to notice that on the food labels  in the freezer section. But what if you're buying it in a scoop or in a bowl of ice cream at a  restaurant then how do you know if you're getting real ice cream or a frozen dessert? Well 5 minute  crafts says we can check using a black light which seems like a highly impractical solution  because I don't usually carry a black light but I have bought one for the purpose of this video  so let's check if it works ... some vegetable oils do glow under blacklight. This is canola oil and  you can see it has a slight shine to it it's not really bright but you can definitely see it, this  next one is coconut oil and it looks very similar to what the canola oil did. Can you guess what it  is in this next bottle if you guessed blood then you'd be wrong it's actually extra virgin olive  oil. Let me turn on the lights and show you and I'll just turn off the UV light as well so you can  see it normally it's the chlorophyll in the green olives that are pressed to make extra virgin olive  oil that fluoresces red under UV light but let's see what happens if we put ice cream under a black  light ... two of these are made from cream and one of them uses vegetable oil can you tell which is  which? This is the one made from coconut oil and these two are made from cream once a vegetable oil  is mixed in with all the other ingredients it's not going to Glow under black light because it  didn't glow very brightly in the first place. If we look back at the original five minute crafts  clip their first ice creams are all nice big rounded scoops and then when you get to the last  one it's completely flat it's as if they needed to tip something over the top that would glow under  the black light maybe that's what they did who knows but that test is debunked. Okay looking at  the next video ironically this is 5 minute crafts testing TikTok hacks to see if they work or don't  work. Here they have a blender and they're adding in sugar and powdered sugar and putting the lid on  and turning on the blender which would just give you powdered sugar but they're saying no it gives  you cotton candy or fairy floss and they're saying that that hack works! We know that that hack does  not work I've already debunked this before I can't believe that they are pretending to test  hacks to tell you if they work or not and then lying to you and saying that they do work when  they definitely don't work, the only way you could make it look like you could make cotton candy in a  blender is this ... put lots of little bits of cotton candy or fairy floss as we call it here  in Australia into your blender, pile it all the way up to the top then turn it on and wait for  it to blend. Get a close-up shot of turning it on and then play the footage in reverse 🧐It's just another fake cooking hack from 5 minute crafts where they take something they know doesn't  work and they're presenting it in a way to tell you that it does work, that is disinformation,  deliberately misinforming your audience. Okay moving on aniko asks hi Anne could this be real  or is it fake? Let's take a look ... the type of pan you use has a big impact on how your  desserts bake cookies baked on a dark tray will have a more crispy edge and the bottom  will brown more than those baked on a light tray for cakes because the dark metal conducts  heat more quickly the bottom of the cake will be darker and the edges of the cake will also  set faster. That's an interesting claim now this to be clear is not going to be disinformation if  this is wrong this will be misinformation, where the person who is telling you believes  that it's true and that's what they think it is but it may not be correct. In order for me  to test it and show it to you I'm gonna have to buy a whole lot of light and dark trays...And then we need to control for all the other variables so I'll use the exact same cake  ingredients all at room temperature mixed for a set length of time just before pouring it into a  tin and then spreading it out and baking it at the same temperature on the same shelf in the  same oven for exactly the same length of time. So the only variable that we're changing here is the  tray. I've deliberately bought trays that are made of different metals because I think that  that is going to be the biggest Factor not what color the tray is but we'll see what the results  say. The one that you just saw bake said it was made of anodized aluminum and now if we have a  look at these ones, the light rose colored tray says it's made of heavy duty carbon steel the  light colored shiny one is made of stainless steel with no coatings over the top the dark colored one  on the bottom left is made from pressed aluminum with a non-stick coating and the other dark one  did not say what it was made of anywhere on the label but the website said it was steel but the  label doesn't confirm or deny that. And just for good measure I want to bake it in Pyrex or  going to make when you're baking you need a basic knowledge of thermal conduction which  is just fancy words for heat transfer between materials. Imagine this is a cross section of  the base of our cake pan so we've cut it in half down the middle and this is the cake  batter and this is just the air in the room. So to start with everything is at room temperature  which means it has some heat so to represent that heat I'm going to use some red lollies.  Nothing needs to move around because it's all the same temperature but then when we  put this in the oven all of a sudden there's a lot more heat in the air than there is in here  or here and what happens next depends on how good a thermal conductor this metal is. Let's  go. Some metals are very good thermal conductors which means they quickly move the heat from the  air in the oven into the metal and into the cake batter on the other side, they're very efficient.  But other metals are a little more reluctant to help. Matt can you  move the heat for me please? Yeah in a minute Mum.He will get the job done it's just gonna take a little while longer to transfer that heat.  Now if we just look at the metals in the trays that I bought ... aluminum is going to be your  fastest heat conductor and next quite a bit further down is your steel. Steel is made of  a mixture of different things in there so it can range depending on the type of steel as  to how fast that is going to conduct the Heat and the slowest of the ones we have is glass.  But what if you don't have the label for the tray anymore and you have a tray at home you  have no idea what it's made of how can you test if it's going to be a good thermal conductor or not?  Well one thing you can do is feel it and compare two trays next to each other ... if right now in  your room just look around and see if you can find something made of wood and something made  of metal and if you put your hand on each of those the metal will feel much colder. Now you  know it's not colder you know they're both room temperature but what's happening is when your hand  is touching the metal the metal is a good thermal conductor so it is pulling the heat out of your  hand because your hand is hotter than the room and it's trying to even it out. The wood will still do  that it will just do it much more slowly so that makes us feel as though the metal is very cold but  really it's the same temperature as the wood it's just making your hand feel cold. So for wood and  metal you can probably tell that difference but metal and metal are a bit closer together so it  can be a bit harder to tell. So a more specific test you can do is what I like to call the ice  cream test ... just place a cube of ice cream onto each tray and wait. The one that is the  best thermal conductor is going to transfer the heat from the tray into the ice cream the fastest  and therefore melt the ice cream the fastest. You can see there the aluminum melted it really  quickly and the slowest here was the stainless steel. Let's do that test again with the other  two pans so we can see where they sit ... both the aluminum ones are really fast and then slowly  comes to stainless steel and eventually the glass melts the ice cream. So now you know which ones  are the best thermal conductors and you can see it had nothing to do with whether the pan was light  or dark in colour it was just to do with what the pan was made of. Looking at all the cakes back in  all the tins you really can't see much difference between them when it comes to baking a thin cake  like this things like changing the temperature of your oven the time you cooked it for they're  going to make a lot more difference than changing the pan that you baked it in. But some things are  a lot more finicky on oven temperature than others things like macarons for example are really quite  fussy little biscuits so if I bake some macarons on every different tray in the same oven at the  same temperature we might be able to see more of a difference. As well as the pans that I tested  before I also wanted to mention that you can use things like a silpat which is made of silicon  and fibreglass which are both poor conductors so they're going to slow down the heat transfer and  you can get a baking tray like this one that is air gapped so you've got two layers of metal with  a gap of air in the middle which again slows down and evens out that heat transfer. Now you don't  just have to consider what type of metal your tray is made of but you also need to consider  how thick that metal is because that will affect how quickly it can take heat through the metal and  pass it into the food and the ice cream test is not going to reflect that. This is one of  the thinnest pans and it's aluminum and you can see the difference just between these two, this  one is Browner even though they were baked at the exact same temperature for the same length of time  and you can see they're all cracked they are not good looking macarons it did not like that fast  heat transfer. These ones are also all cracked and this would be one of the thinnest steel trays that  we have moving right along to the carbon steel and the stainless steel ones they are looking a  little bit better but we still have a fair bit of cracking. Then moving those along we have glass  and the thicker aluminum so even though in the ice cream test it looked like this was exactly  the same as the other aluminum it is substantially thicker on the base here which makes that heat  transfer slower and the macarons much preferred that we've got no cracks and the glass which  as you know is the poorest conductor out of the ones we tested has slowly heated them up and it  actually had to be left in the oven three minutes longer because they were not done at the same time  as the others and lastly the air-gapped tray we've got the silmat on one half which is slowing it  down even further and the air gap on the other providing that slow heat which macarons like.  So if you're baking something like macarons you might want to invest in a tray that is thick and  a slow conductor because that will probably work best for those but for everything else you're  probably not going to notice a difference and it would make more of an effect if you just adjust  your oven temperature, so if you've got a really thin aluminum pan just turn your temperature of  your oven down a little bit and you are not going to notice. You don't need to rush out and buy new  pans you especially don't need to buy them based on whether they are light or dark. Okay next  Jared has sent in this clip they've got baking soda putting it in some water adding spinach  baking sodas. High alkaline pH breaks down pesticides. Clean and baking soda solution before  eating. So that video is telling us we should rinse all our fruit and veggies in a baking soda  solution to get off any traces of pesticides. Now I think I know the study that they have taken this  from but they have taken it so far out of context that it's no longer true. The study that was done  was done firstly on apples not on spinach or any other fruit or vegetables just on apples and  they didn't just rinse it they soaked it for eight minutes in the solution of bicarb and they weren't  testing the tiny amounts of pesticides that would be on the residue when you get it from the shop  they were dousing them in pesticides, letting it dry and then washing it to see what percentage  it got off using the bicarb. They were actually talking about something that could be used further  back before it even got to market they weren't looking at stuff you could do at home that wasn't  the purpose of the study and also the major thing is they only tested 2 pesticides ... there are  hundreds of different pesticides that are used in the production of fruits and vegetables and  they only tested two and if you read the study it says in the study more tests are going to be  needed to be done with all the other pesticides you can't just extrapolate from one thing and go  oh yeah that'll work for everything. You can't do that so no do not start washing your fruit  and vegetables in baking soda or soaking them or doing any of that just wash them really well in  water and enjoy eating them because they are good for you. With thanks to my patrons for all of your  support you guys are absolutely wonderful I love my patrons I really enjoy that Community I really  think it's amazing you can go over to patreon.com and join them there and see the different rewards  that are there for the different levels. Make it a great week by being kind to others and if  you enjoyed the video let the algorithm know by liking sharing commenting subscribing turning  on the notification Bell you guys know what to do make it a great week and I'll see you on Friday 😊\n"