QUESTION: Is there a way to reduce or omit salt in baking recipes? If salt is omitted, what is the impact on the baked goods?ANSWER: In bread recipes, salt strengthens the gluten, the protein strands that help to form the structure. It also enhances shelf life, keeping bread from going stale as quickly.In sweet things, salt enhances flavor. A little salt makes sweet things taste sweeter. Cutting out the salt completely would mean the cake or cookie wouldn't taste as sweet.But there is such a small amount of salt in baked goods and most home cooking, cutting it out won't remove that much sodium from your diet. And if the flavors aren't as satisfying, you could end up eating more.The real culprit in America's high sodium intake is processed foods. Frozen and packaged foods, condiments, canned foods, fast food and chain-restaurant food all tend to be high in sodium. If you cut those things and do most of your cooking from scratch, you'll consume a lot less salt even if you leave the salt in the recipes alone.

QUESTION: I have two shakers that are identical except for the number of holes. How can I tell which is for salt and which is for pepper?ANSWER: There isn't a definitive answer. Some sources say the salt goes in the one with the most number of holes because you use more of it. But others say since salt was so valuable, it went in the shaker with one hole.Since preground pepper tastes like dust, I'd skip the whole issue. Use a pepper grinder for the pepper and put salt in both of the shakers so you can keep one at each end of the table.