Ammonia: A little off the subject I know.

fishindoc

I know this is a BBQ site but there are a lot of good cooks on here so I wanna ask an interesting question. If I am outta line, just tell me. I made pumpkin bread this weekend and these are the ingredients: Truvia/Sugar combo, flour, oil, nutmeg, cinnamon, eggs, fresh pumpkin (I gather from pie pumpkins and food process), baking soda, salt, 2 tsp sugar. It looked good but had an ammonia smell that was so strong I couldnt eat it. I sniffed all the ingredients separately and discovered nothing. Any thoughts? Id rather not do a repeat

BizGreenEgg

Since the only thing I see in that recipe that is out of the ordinary is Truvia, I'd think that there's something strange going on with that artificial sweetener.  That or there is some kind of spoilage going on with the fresh pumpkin (i.e. not canned).  Some kinds of spoilage are not as easily detected until they are heated and volatile gases are released from their dissolved state.  You could heat the pumpkin and see if the smell develops.  But my feeling is that the Truvia is reacting with something that can provide the necessary nitrogen, or it's "natural flavors" are degrading into an ammonia-like compound.

gdenby

Ammonia has nitrogen in it. AFAIK, Truvia and sugar are just hydrocarbons. There are still baking sodas sold that are ammonium carbonate, but those are unusual, and labelled baker's ammonia. 

Came across and article about ammonia production, but that occurs at temperatures way higher than bread baking.

Considering that vegetable matter has nitrogen in it, maybe that had something to do with the odor. Still, none of the ingredients are things I haven't used many times w/o such an odor.

Any chance your oven was cleaned, and all the cleaner wasn't burned off?

nolaegghead

You may have smelled something that you thought smelled like ammonia. 

If there was ammonia in the ingredients, I would suspect the pumpkin first.  As stated above, sugars don't have nitrogen in them.  Usually ammonia is generated by the microbial breakdown of proteins.  You're not going to get a chemical reaction that makes ammonia from nitrogen based organics when cooking.

SGH

@fishindoc
Im going to take a guess that it was the pumpkin it's self. I could be off by miles though. I would like to point out that we grow a few pumpkins. If they are deprived of water, the bottom that is touching the ground will start to rot long before the rest of the pumpkin. When you cut into them, it's like opening a bottle of ammonia. Again, I don't know for sure that is your dilemma. But it would be my first guess.