Chocolate chip cookies become first food to be baked in space

The best biscuits took around two hours to brown
Commander Luca Parmitano and astronaut Christina Koch with milk and cookies in space
PA
Ellena Cruse23 January 2020

In a small step for man but a giant leap for baked goods, chocolate chip cookies have become the first food to be baked in space.

The round biscuits were prepared in a special oven on board the International Space Station (ISS), led by commander Luca Parmitano and astronaut Christina Koch.

The process was a real mission and it took several long days for the crew to experiment with different methods.

In the end, each biscuit was cooked one at a time to determine the optimum temperature.

Chocolate chip cookies have become the first food to be baked in space
PA Media

The average chocolate chip cookie bakes in a convection oven for 16-18 minutes at around 148C (300F) on Earth, but there was no recipe for baking cookies in orbit.

Astronauts on the ISS were directed to adjust the bake time for each of the five cookies – the first four at 148C and the fifth at 163C (325F) – in order to ascertain the ideal conditions in space.

The first cookie baked for 25 minutes but was still under-cooked.

ISS commander Luca Parmitano baking cookies on board the International Space Station (ISS)
PA Media

The second released a fresh-baked cookie scent in the ISS after baking for 75 minutes.

The astronauts deemed the fourth and fifth cookies – one baked for 120 minutes and left to cool for 25 minutes, and the other baked for 130 minutes and left cooling for 10 minutes – as the most successful.

While it was thought that without gravity the cookies would be more spherical, the initial shape and consistency appeared the same in space as they are on Earth.

Mary Murphy, senior internal payloads manager at NanoRacks, which designed the oven, said: “While we have initial visual and scent feedback from the crew aboard the ISS, we’re excited to dive into fully understanding the baking results.”

Three of the snacks, as well as other experiments and cargo, returned to Earth on the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft on January 7, which had launched on November 2.

The cookies will soon undergo additional testing by food science professionals to determine the final results of the experiment, which will help experts with future efforts to make long-duration space travel more hospitable.

The dough for the cookies was provided by DoubleTree by Hilton and is the same used in cookies given to hotel guests.

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