For anyone who knows a thing or two about bakery, the importance of certain ingredients can not be undermined. Whether you’re baking a cake, or a batch of cupcakes, muffins, or cookies, ingredients like eggs, butter, and baking soda are irreplaceable. Or are they?
Baking soda or sodium bicarbonate is one of the most essential requirements in baking, as it makes the dough rise, thus giving the finished product its texture and fullness. However, if you ever find yourself devoid of any baking soda, worry not, for thanks to science, there is something else that does exactly the same trick that baking soda does.
Baking powder
Baking powder. That is what you’re going to use when you’re out of baking soda. Both baking products look and feel the same, but there is a difference between the two. Baking soda is used as a leavening agent, which means that its function is to make dough rise. Baking powder on the other hand is a mixture of baking soda and an acid which is usually cream of tartar. Baking powder can be more effective when making recipes that don’t contain acidic ingredients. It may also be more effective for most recipes as it causes dough to rise when it gets wet as well as when it is baked.
Swapping baking powder for baking soda is quite easy too. Just use four times the amount of baking powder as you would have baking soda, where you take two tablespoons of baking powder for every half a teaspoon of baking soda.
