Parchment Paper History: How We Got Paper Perfect for Baking (2019) | Hacker News Reader

Parchment Paper History: How We Got Paper Perfect for Baking (2019)

tedium.co

62 pointscolinprince32 comments

I can add some information to this from the UK market

The best baking paper is Silicone Vegetable Parchment. This can be baked on usually 5-6 times so is great for a commercial bakery. The one we sold was a two-sided emulsion of Polydimethylsiloxane coated on 42gsm vegetable parchment. It could be used for dry, wet, fatty foods and for baking application up to 220ºc, together with frozen food, food interleave and industrial uses

There is a silicoat baking paper which is cheaper but can only be used a couple of times. The one we sold was 57gsm Silcoat is a bleached, high density paper, manufactured from virgin fibre with high chemical purity, coated on both sides with silicone and was certified to be Home Compostable.

There is also baking parchment which is is widely available for consumers, these tend to be quite thin and only suitable for single use. It's a parchment paper with silicone coatings.

There is also basic greaseproof (which we used as kids as "tracing paper") which can take some temperature but is nothing like as robust.

> NO The answer to the question, “Can I replace wax paper with parchment paper in the kitchen?” In fact, doing so might be a great shortcut to starting a fire. See, silicone material is designed in such a way that resists heat, which makes it perfect for baking; wax paper, also known as “greaseless paper,” is not. (As the Reynolds website notes, though, there are some cases, though, where wax paper makes sense in the oven—say, at the bottom of a cake pan, below some batter, where it’s not directly exposed to the oven’s heat—but you wouldn’t just want to randomly swap it in because you’re out of parchment paper.) So despite the fact that these materials seem like kitchen doppelgängers, DO NOT CROSS THE STREAMS.

> Editor’s note: This post has been clarified to note that there are some use cases for wax paper in the oven, though not as a direct replacement for parchment paper.

The note at the end says that the post has been "clarified", but isn't the base problem that that question is asked backwards? The question they should be asking, and indeed the question they are answering is "Can I replace parchment paper with wax paper", and answer is indeed that with rare exceptions this would lead to disaster.

But the question as quoted (but not answered) is "Can I replace wax paper with parchment paper in the kitchen?" Which is a question rarely asked, but less obvious. My guess would be that in almost every case you can indeed replace wax paper with parchment paper, because to a first approximation wax paper is always a disaster in the kitchen.

Separately, I'll add that despite being quite interested in this topic, and quite passionate in my love for parchment paper and my hatred for wax paper, I found this article to be really painful to read. What terrible stylistic choices! Are there people out there who prefer this style of ADHD vomit in the articles they choose to read?

I was able to find packages of dry wax deli paper at Office Depot dot com. They have a great selection of break-room supplies that you can also use in your home kitchen.

The reason I was looking for this paper is because of those frozen burrito instructions which say to wrap in a paper towel. But if the burrito is defrosted, the tortilla is quite sticky, and heating in the microwave welds it to the paper. The deli paper did not solve this issue, but at least the "dry wax" is microwave-safe.

A tip I recently learnt: if lining a cake tin or similar with baking paper, scrunch it up really tight, then flatten, and it will fit to the tin very really

Parchment paper was definitely widely used in kitchens before the 00s.

Before the 00s, it was coated with a substance called Quilon. Then they switched to silicone.

A chromium solution?!

That got my attention too, but it is trivalent rather than hexavalent chromium. While the latter is both toxic and carcinogenic, the former is largely non-toxic and known to have roles in lipid and carbohydrate metabolism.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S277241662...

Yes, one of the people who helped popularize it was Julia Child, I believe starting with her hefty book Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 1961. We had that in hardcover in the late 1970s and 80s, heavily used in our kitchen. I used to make its crème caramel, although that didn’t involve parchment paper.

Later her TV show The French Chef apparently also popularized it further - it ran from 1963 to 1973.

But, searching the subject it seems that she helped popularize a technique in 1997 on her later TV show, Baking With Julia, in which you use an upside down pan as a guide to cut a perfect circle of parchment that fits the pan. Perhaps that helps explain more widespread awareness in the 2000s?

Well, I meant globally. Child's book was of course translated to various languages but hard to say what its influence on popularizing parchment paper was other countries. I've no idea if those TV shows were broadcasted outside the US, though DVD releases appear to exist.

is it different from butcher paper?

Yes butcher paper is for wrapping raw meat and being resistant to leaking fluids from raw meat. You can freeze with it but can't cook with it.

its commonly used for smoking meats at 250F / 120 C.

Yeah, when I got to the "can't cook with it" part, I was like wait, what? I use it all the time for smoking brisket.

Ah well, TIL....

now - that said, I'm talking about pink butcher paper, I suspect the white stuff is unsuited for heat at all.

a quick google search says yes

TL/DR: We Have Got It Because of PFAS

The article says nothing about PFAS. It states that bakers' parchment paper is treated with silicone.

But the truth is that a parchment paper is impossible without PFAS.

That is not true. Especially since TFA clearly dates the invention of parchment paper to 1847, nearly a century before the synthesis of PFAS.

How so? Parchment paper is cellulose impregnated with silicone.

That is the current incarnation of parchment paper, but before that it was impregnated with Quilon, which I understand is fatty acids stabilized with trivalent chromium.

did chromium become another type of fluorine while we all weren't looking or is this just a fun fact wholly unrelated to the bit about PFAS upthread?

The concern is twofold. First, chromium is an element and as such does not break down, it can only be secreted. Second, the higher oxidation state Cr(VI) is a known carcinogen. It's claimed the Cr(III) here will not oxidize to Cr(VI) under normal cooking conditions, however.

My understanding is the claim that Cr is a necessary micronutrient is disputed.

so... wholly unrelated to the claim that it's impossible to make parchment paper without polyfluoroalkyl substances which is what was being refuted in the thing you replied to?

I was pointing out a concern with that non-PFAs solution.

I also understand the silicone in current parchment paper isn't a PFAS, as it contains no fluorine.

The tl;dr of an article should be about the article.

come on now, you're really expecting too much of the internet with that kind of thought process.

If you want an attack angle into parchment paper, look up a) silicone curing types and b) loose siloxanes.

A cool thing about silicones is they complicate the processing of landfill gas. That gas is from bacterial decomposition of waste landfills, and is mostly methane + CO2. So burning it in small engines or turbines makes sense. But it also has silicon-bearing volatile compounds from decomposition of silicones, and if you burn those in an engine you fill it with particles of silica, which abrade surfaces and form glassy coatings on turbine blades.

An additional source of silicones in landfills is cosmetics, of which they form a substantial fraction.

Modern cosmetics are 90% harmful garbage.

There are valid uses for silicone, for example high quality silicone gaskets for leak proof containers are a very solid use case. We should just not use it for everything that's remotely applicable.

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