/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>7717572
If the food is already acidic and you only use sodium bicarb, you will not get a two stage reaction and it will not rise as much as if you added both. Maybe that is what you want, it usually is not.

Baking soda is also much stronger than baking powder. For say, buttermilk biscuits or pancakes, if you only used baking soda then you would end up neutralizing the tang from the buttermilk. Using less soda and a bit of powder will produce fluffier, slightly tangy pancakes instead of less fluffy, not tangy pancakes.

You will not see a recipe with baking soda in it that does not have an acid as well. Only using soda in that case will very slightly rise your product, but it will have a metallic aftertaste. That's not good eats.

So to sum up, the extra acid in baking powder is not redundant in an acidic dough that also contains pure baking soda because it will rise more as a combo and make it possible to rise the dough without completely neutralizing acidic ingredients. Baked goods that are not acidic will not call for baking soda under any circumstance unless it is made by a moron with no tastebuds. If a recipe calls for both it has a not insignificant amount of acid in it, some of which you likely want to preserve such as in a lemony dish. If it only calls for baking soda it will also have a significant amount of acid, but the desired end result is a flatter, less tangy product than one that calls for both.

I have produced a matrix for you to make this more clear, as I am a visual learner and bored at work