Can't make chocolate chip cookies from scratch

[jbash]

No recipes for:

• Baking soda
• Baking powder
• Ethyl alcohol (for vanilla extract)

[schollz]

@jbash Ideally everything on the website are things you can actually make at home (yes its possible to get a cow, sometimes, or at least borrow one).

Baking soda/powder is not something that should be made at home. It requires mixing carbonic acid and sodium hydroxide or it requires breaking down mined trona ore.

Alcohol is possible though.

[schollz]

Now that I think about it, maybe it is worthwhile to include baking soda/powder anyway, as its awfully educational to see.

[jbash]

A cow is a lot more dangerous than a little lye, if you don't know how to handle either one...

On edit, as long as I'm whinging, it's possible to make the lye yourself. Not sure about carbonic acid offhand, but possibly. And I think the acid in baking powder is probably citric, which you could probably purify.

On edit again: No, I'm wrong. Sodium aluminum sulfate and monocalcium phosphate. Could be a little demanding to make...

NB: If you're going to worry abour that stuff, it's illegal to distill the alcohol in some places.

[ambrosechapel]

I believe you should add a panel for baking soda etc. even if it just says "redacted: ingredient is somewhat dangerous to make" — simply because the interface is puzzling if you don't.

• In the general case, you tell me "select an ingredient to make from scratch", then I click on it and the page changes.
• In the edge case of baking soda, nothing changes.

If that's the first thing I choose, the whole website appears broken. By a process of elimination I can click on butter, flour etc. and see how the general case works. But I already know roughly how those things are made, so I clicked baking soda because it's more interesting.