If you don't have baking soda what can you use instead?!
If you don't have baking soda what can you use instead?
Answers:
Baking soda is four times as strong as baking powder ― so if your recipe calls for 1 teaspoon of baking soda, you would need four teaspoons of baking powder to produce the same amount of lift. Unfortunately, though, it’s not that simple.
Baking powder is made of baking soda and exactly the right amount of acid to react with the soda (it also includes corn starch to keep the ingredients from prematurely reacting in the privacy of their container). So if your recipe already has acidic ingredients that were going to neutralize the baking soda called for, you are adding other ingredients that may not sit well with them.
Substituting for a lack of baking powder is very easy: 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda plus 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar (ignoring the cornstarch) for each teaspoon of baking powder required.
We’ve looked in dozens of books to be sure, but no one provides information for the reverse procedure ― substituting baking powder when you don’t have soda on hand. To do so, you would have to consider the acidic ingredients in the recipe, and perhaps reengineer the recipe to replace them with more neutral ingredients (using whole milk instead of buttermilk, perhaps). But at that point, you would see, it would be easier and probably a lot more successful to pick up a box of baking soda.
The short answer: no, there's no substitute, and yes, baking soda is necessary. Baking soda, also known as sodium bicarbonate, has a number of functions in baking - it acts as a leavener, as well, as a browning agent. What does that mean? Think about a slice of bread: it’s full of little holes and pockets; and, it's not a perfectly smooth, flat surface. Those holes and pockets are caused by carbon dioxide, which baking soda gives off when it reacts with an acid. Remember those baking soda-and-vinegar volcanoes from science class? This is essentially the same thing. Baking soda, when it reacts with an acidic component in a recipe, fizzes and bubbles, creating an airier, lighter-textured bread than otherwise. However, there is such a thing as too much baking soda. If a baked good turns out dense and leaden, it's quite possible that excessive baking soda was the culprit. Why? If too much carbon dioxide is produced, the bubbles rise to the top of the bread and burst, instead of hanging out in the middle and making the bread airier.
Baking soda's other job is to help browning by neutralizing the natural acidity present in food. If you see a recipe with a disparately large quantity of baking soda relative to the flour (the average ratio is 1/4 teaspoon per cup of flour), it's probably used to neutralize the acid and aid browning.
Baking powder is similar to baking soda, though it's about a quarter as strong, and it's mixed together with exactly the right proportion of acid in order for it to activate. Though it may seem counterintuitive when a recipe calls for both, it makes scientific sense.
Same as minoloblaniks which didn't quote where they received their info from which I will go ahead and state!