Baking soda substitutes

Baking soda substitutes — 6 options, ranked, with the exact amount

Also called bicarbonate of soda, bicarb, bicarb soda, sodium bicarbonate, cooking soda

Use thisBest of 6 options

Use Baking powder

3 tsp for every 1 tsp baking soda

Use 3 tsp baking powder per 1 tsp baking soda. It will rise, but if the recipe contains buttermilk, sour cream, yogurt, molasses, brown sugar or natural cocoa, that acid is now left unneutralized: expect a tangier taste, a paler colour and less spread. That trade is the whole story on this page.

Verdict —: Tweak it
The tweak —: Whisk it through the dry ingredients and get the batter into the oven promptly — the first burst of gas starts as soon as the batter is wet
Best for —: when the recipe has no acidic ingredient in it
Pantry —: Likely in your cupboard

Checked 22 Jul 2026 · no sponsored swaps

But first: what’s the baking soda doing?

Pick your case

Look at your recipe's wet and sweet ingredients — is there an acid in there?

The soda was doing two jobs: making gas AND cancelling that acid out. Baking powder replaces the gas but not the cancelling, so the finished thing tastes noticeably tangier and comes out paler. Use 3 tsp baking powder per 1 tsp soda and expect that difference — it is not a mistake you made, it is the swap.
Notes on baking powder
3 tsp per 1 tsp
Then the soda was never going to fizz much anyway and the recipe is almost certainly relying on baking powder as well. Baking powder is a clean swap here at 3 tsp per 1 tsp of soda, and nothing else changes.
Notes on baking powder
3 tsp per 1 tsp
The spread and the dark edges come from the alkalinity, not from the gas, and no amount of baking powder buys that back. Bake them anyway if you must — they will be small, pale and cakey — or wait until you have soda.
Notes on baking powder
3 tsp per 1 tsp
Swap the flour rather than the leavener: self-rising flour already carries baking powder and salt, so throw out the recipe's flour, baking soda, baking powder and most of its salt and use self-rising flour cup for cup.
Notes on self-rising flour
Swap the flour, not the soda

Do not start from which powder looks most like baking soda. Start from your recipe's ingredient list, and find the acid: buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream, molasses, brown sugar, honey, natural cocoa, vinegar, lemon. If one is there, the soda was cancelling it out as well as making gas, and baking powder at 3 tsp per 1 tsp will rise but taste tangier and bake up paler. If there is no acid, baking powder at 3:1 is a clean swap and you will not notice. And if the recipe is a thin chewy cookie or a pretzel, the alkalinity IS the recipe — wait until you have soda.

Job by job3 jobs

Baking soda is a base. It makes gas only where an acid is already in the batter, and it also raises the batter's pH — which is why soda cookies spread wider and brown darker than powder ones.

Moisture & hydrationsecondary

The higher pH weakens gluten and lets cookie dough slacken and flow before it sets, which is what makes soda cookies thin, wide and crackle-topped instead of small and domed.

Leaveningprimary

Meeting an acid in a wet batter, it fizzes off carbon dioxide; the bubbles get trapped by flour and egg as the oven sets the structure, which is the difference between a risen crumb and a dense one.

Browning & colorsecondary

Raising the batter's pH speeds up the Maillard reaction, so the same dough goes darker and more deeply toasted-tasting with soda in it than with baking powder — this is why chocolate cake made with soda looks near-black and pretzels are dipped in an alkaline bath.

Every option, one card

Ranked · per 1 tsp baking soda

Baking Soda substitutes compared
#	Substitute	Instead of 1 tsp baking soda	Verdict
1	Baking powderwhen the recipe has no acidic ingredient in it	3 tspTweak it	Tweak it
2	Potassium bicarbonatewhen the recipe's browning and spread matter and you happen to own it	1 ¼ tspTweak it	Tweak it
3	Self-rising flourbiscuits, scones and pancakes, which is what it is milled for	1 cupper 1 cup all-purpose flour + ¼ tsp baking sodaYou'll taste it	You'll taste it
4	Baker's ammonia (ammonium bicarbonate)thin crisp cookies, springerle, speculaas and crackers	1 tsp, crushed fine and dissolved in the recipe's liquid firstYou'll taste it	You'll taste it
5	Whipped egg whitespancakes, waffles and thin batters you can fold whites into	2 egg, whipped to soft peaks and folded in lastYou'll taste it	You'll taste it
6	Club sodapancakes, waffles and tempura batter	Nothing directly — instead replace the recipe's milk or water, cup for cup, with cold club soda straight from a freshly opened bottleYou'll taste it	You'll taste it

What changesWhat changes, option by option6 options

Baking powder

tangier and sharper if the recipe contains buttermilk, sour cream, yogurt

Baking soda already blended with a powdered acid and starch, so it fizzes on its own; roughly a quarter to a third of the tin is actually baking soda, which is where the 3:1 comes from.

Covers: Leavening
Misses: Moisture & hydration — not covered; Browning & color — not covered

What these mean

Amount: 3 tsp (1 tbsp) baking powder for 1 tsp baking soda
Then: whisk it through the dry ingredients and get the batter into the oven promptly — the first burst of gas starts as soon as the batter is wet
Best for: when the recipe has no acidic ingredient in it, cakes and muffins where a tangier, paler result is acceptable, small amounts of soda, under ½ tsp per cup of flour
Taste: tangier and sharper if the recipe contains buttermilk, sour cream, yogurt, molasses, brown sugar or natural cocoa — that acid is no longer being cancelled out by a base
Texture: puffier and more cake-like, less chewy; cookies come out domed rather than thin
Look: noticeably paler. Chocolate cake goes reddish-brown instead of near-black, cookie edges stay blond instead of going dark, and cookies spread much less so they come out smaller and taller
Pantry: Likely in your cupboard
Suits: vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free

Use 3 tsp baking powder for every 1 tsp of baking soda the recipe calls for.
If the recipe also calls for baking powder, keep that amount and add this on top of it.
Get it into the oven within about 15 minutes of mixing. Do not mix the batter the night before.

This is the swap everybody reaches for, and the 3:1 number is the easy part. The part almost no page tells you: soda in a recipe is usually neutralizing an acid as well as making gas. Baking powder brings its own acid with it, so the recipe's buttermilk or molasses goes unneutralized — that is where the tang, the pale colour and the lost spread come from.

The 3:1 only holds for small amounts. Standard practice is about 1 to 1 ¼ tsp baking powder per cup of flour; if tripling the soda pushes you past that, the batter rises fast and then sinks, and the crumb tastes metallic. In that case halve the whole recipe rather than overdose the leavening.

Potassium bicarbonate

close, though some people pick up a faint bitter or mineral note at higher doses

The same kind of base with potassium in place of sodium, sold for low-sodium baking and for winemaking, and the only swap on this page that keeps the alkalinity as well as the gas.

Covers: Moisture & hydration; Leavening; Browning & color

What these mean

Amount: 1 ¼ tsp potassium bicarbonate for 1 tsp baking soda
Then: whisk it into the dry ingredients exactly as you would soda
Best for: when the recipe's browning and spread matter and you happen to own it, low-sodium baking, chocolate cakes and chewy cookies
Texture: the same — this is a base doing the same chemistry
Look: the same colour and the same spread, because the pH effect is preserved
Pantry: Special trip
Suits: vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free

Use 1 ¼ tsp per 1 tsp of baking soda. The molecule is heavier — 100 g per mole against sodium bicarbonate's 84 — so a level teaspoon carries about a fifth less of the gas-making part.
Add about ¼ tsp extra salt per teaspoon replaced if the recipe tasted right to you before; you have taken sodium out of the formula.

Chemically this is the honest answer and baking powder is the practical one. It is listed second only because almost nobody owns it.

Most people do not have this in the cupboard, and it is not worth a trip to the store when baking powder is already there.

Self-rising flour

tangier in a buttermilk recipe

All-purpose flour premixed with baking powder and salt, at roughly 1 ½ tsp baking powder and ¼ to ½ tsp salt per cup.

Covers: Leavening
Misses: Moisture & hydration — not covered; Browning & color — not covered

What these mean

Amount: 1 cup self-rising flour for 1 cup all-purpose flour + ¼ tsp baking soda
Then: leave out the recipe's baking soda, its baking powder and all but a pinch of its salt
Best for: biscuits, scones and pancakes, which is what it is milled for, when you are also short on baking powder, recipes with ½ tsp soda or less per cup of flour
Taste: tangier in a buttermilk recipe, for the same unneutralized-acid reason as baking powder
Texture: softer and more tender, sometimes crumbly in anything that wanted chew
Look: paler crust and less spread; biscuits and scones rise straight up rather than out
Suits: vegan, dairy-free
Contains: wheat

Remove the recipe's salt entirely, or cut it to a pinch. A cup of self-rising flour already contains ¼ to ½ tsp.
Remove the recipe's baking powder as well as its soda; do not add both.
Do not use it in a recipe calling for bread flour or cake flour — self-rising flour is milled soft and low in protein, so a chewy bread turns out crumbly.

This is a flour swap dressed up as a leavening swap, which is why the amounts are written per cup of flour rather than per teaspoon of soda. It is genuinely good in biscuits and pancakes and wrong in bread.

Only where you can swap the whole flour weight. It is useless for adjusting the leavening of a batter you have already mixed.

Baker's ammonia (ammonium bicarbonate)

in a thin cookie, cleaner and crisper than soda

An old European leavener that breaks down in the oven's heat into ammonia gas, carbon dioxide and water, needing no acid at all to work.

Covers: Leavening; Browning & color
Misses: Moisture & hydration — not covered

What these mean

Amount: 1 tsp baker's ammonia, crushed fine and dissolved in the recipe's liquid first for 1 tsp baking soda
Then: bake in a hot oven, 350F/175C or above, and only in something thin
Best for: thin crisp cookies, springerle, speculaas and crackers, when you want extra crispness rather than lift, recipes baked thin enough for the ammonia smell to escape
Taste: in a thin cookie, cleaner and crisper than soda; in anything thick, unmistakably of ammonia, and it does not fade
Texture: much crisper and snappier, more like a cracker
Look: flatter and more evenly golden, with a fine bubbled surface rather than a crackled one
Pantry: Special trip
Suits: vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free

Crush any lumps and dissolve it in the recipe's liquid before mixing, or you get bitter pockets.
Roll or drop the dough no thicker than about ¼ inch so the ammonia can bake out.
Open a window. The smell during baking is strong and it does clear.

Also sold as hartshorn or ammonium carbonate. Worth knowing about because it is the one leavener here that needs no acid, and dangerous to reach for casually because thickness decides whether it tastes clean or foul.

Thin, dry, crisp things only. Never in a cake, muffin, quick bread, brownie or thick cookie — the gas cannot escape a moist crumb and the ammonia stays in the food.

Whipped egg whites

flatter and slightly eggy

Air beaten into egg white by hand or mixer, which is a different mechanism from chemical leavening: the air is already there, and heat only expands it.

Misses: Moisture & hydration — not covered; Leavening — not covered; Browning & color — not covered

What these mean

Amount: 2 egg whites, whipped to soft peaks and folded in last for 1 tsp baking soda
Then: hold back 2 tbsp of the recipe's other liquid, and bake straight away
Best for: pancakes, waffles and thin batters you can fold whites into, when you have no chemical leavener of any kind, batters that go straight from bowl to pan
Taste: flatter and slightly eggy; nothing is neutralizing the recipe's acid, so a buttermilk batter tastes sour
Texture: light and foamy at first, then noticeably rubbery once cool
Look: pale, with a smooth flat top instead of a domed and cracked one; pancakes look thick and spongy rather than bubbled
Pantry: Likely in your cupboard
Suits: vegetarian, gluten-free, dairy-free
Contains: egg

Fold in thirds with a spatula, cutting down and turning over; stirring knocks the air straight back out.
Cook or bake within 10 minutes. Whipped whites deflate as they stand.
Reduce the recipe's other liquid by about 2 tbsp per 2 whites added.

This is aeration, not leavening — you are beating air in rather than making gas. It fills the gap in a pancake batter and it is not a route to a risen cake.

Batters only, and only ones you fold and cook immediately. This does nothing in a cookie dough or a stiff bread dough.

Club soda

no change from the club soda itself

Water with carbon dioxide dissolved into it under pressure, which gives a little lift as the bubbles come out of solution and no chemical leavening at all.

Misses: Moisture & hydration — not covered; Leavening — not covered; Browning & color — not covered

What these mean

Amount: Nothing directly — instead replace the recipe's milk or water, cup for cup, with cold club soda straight from a freshly opened bottleper 1 tsp baking soda
Then: stir barely enough to combine, leaving lumps, and cook immediately
Best for: pancakes, waffles and tempura batter, the last resort when you have no leavener in the house, batters cooked within a minute or two of mixing
Taste: no change from the club soda itself, but sour in any recipe whose acid the soda was meant to neutralize
Texture: barely any lift; dense and heavy compared with the real thing
Look: flat and pale, no dome and no crack on top
Pantry: Likely in your cupboard
Suits: vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free

Open the bottle at the moment you mix. A bottle that has been open since yesterday is just water.
Cook the batter immediately — within two minutes, not twenty.
Keep it cold; cold water holds more dissolved gas.

The amount of gas dissolved in a cup of club soda is a fraction of what a teaspoon of soda makes in a reaction, and most of it escapes while you stir. Listed because it is widely suggested, not because it works well.

Thin batters cooked on the spot. It will not raise a cake, a muffin or a cookie, whatever you read.

Don’t swap it here

4 cases

A recipe where the spread and the dark edge are the point: chewy chocolate chip cookies, ginger snaps, snickerdoodles, brownie-edge cookies.Bake half the dough now and accept cakey cookies, or refrigerate the dough for up to three days and buy soda. Soda is cheap and lasts years.
Pretzels, bagels and ramen noodles, where soda goes in the boiling water or is baked into a stronger alkali.Do not attempt these without baking soda. There is no swap; make something else today.
SafetyHome canning, pickling or fermenting — adding baking soda to cut the sourness of a brine, or swapping the acid in a tested recipe for something else.Follow a tested recipe exactly and change nothing about its acid. See the National Center for Home Food Preservation.
Baking anything thick — a cake, muffin, brownie or fat cookie — with baker's ammonia in place of soda.Keep baker's ammonia for thin crisp cookies and crackers. For a cake, use baking powder at 3:1.

Safety

2 notes

Canning
Never add baking soda to a canning, pickling, fermenting or curing recipe to cut sourness, and never change the acid a tested recipe calls for. Acidity is what keeps those foods safe, and raising the pH creates conditions in which Clostridium botulinum can grow. Use tested recipes exactly as written.
Source — National Center for Home Food Preservation (opens in a new tab)
Dose
Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, and taking spoonfuls of it as an antacid or a remedy is not the same as baking with it. This page is about baking only.
Source — FDA Food Additive Status List (opens in a new tab)

If it went wrong

4 fixes

The cake or muffins taste soapy, metallic or chemical.More soda went in than the recipe's acid could use up, so unreacted sodium bicarbonate is left in the crumb. Usually a heaped spoon, or soda added on top of the recipe's baking powder.There is no fixing the baked batch — the taste is in the crumb. Next time level the spoon or weigh it at 4.6 g per teaspoon, and check whether the recipe wanted powder rather than soda.
The buttermilk pancakes or muffins came out sour and pale after you swapped in baking powder.Exactly what this swap does. The soda was neutralizing the buttermilk's acid as well as making gas; baking powder brings its own acid and leaves the buttermilk's alone.Nothing to do now, and nothing went wrong with your technique. For the rest of the batter, a splash of milk in place of some of the buttermilk softens the tang. It is edible and it is not what the recipe tastes like with soda.
The cookies stayed small and domed instead of spreading.Baking powder keeps the dough's pH low, so the gluten stays strong and the dough holds its shape instead of flowing.Flatten the remaining dough balls with the bottom of a glass before baking and give them an extra minute for colour. They will still be cakier than the recipe intends.
Nothing rose at all.Either the soda is spent, or there was no acid in the recipe for it to react with, or the batter sat around after mixing.Test the soda with vinegar before you use it again, and look for the acid in the ingredient list. If there is none, the recipe needed baking powder, not soda.

Measure it

7 measures

1 tsp baking sodaabout 4.6 gWeigh it if you can. Leaveners are the one place in baking where a heaped teaspoon instead of a level one genuinely shows in the result.
Baking soda vs baking powder strengthsoda is roughly 3 to 4 times strongerBaking powder is only about a quarter to a third baking soda; the rest is powdered acid and starch. That ratio is where the 3:1 comes from.
Baking powder ceilingabout 1 to 1 ¼ tsp per cup of flourIf tripling your soda takes you past this, do not do it. Over-leavened batter rises quickly, collapses, and tastes metallic.
Potassium bicarbonate conversion1 ¼ tsp per 1 tsp baking sodaPotassium bicarbonate is 100 g per mole against sodium bicarbonate's 84, so the same spoonful carries about a fifth less gas-making capacity.
Acid needed to use up 1 tsp sodaabout 1 cup buttermilk, or 1 tbsp lemon juice or vinegar, or 1 cup molassesIf the recipe has a teaspoon of soda and no acid anywhere near this much, most of that soda is not fizzing — it is sitting there raising the pH, and it will taste soapy.
Freshness test¼ tsp soda + 2 tsp vinegar should foam hard within a few secondsIf it only trickles, it is spent. Unopened soda keeps for years; an open box in a humid cupboard is the usual culprit.
Dutch-process vs natural cocoanatural cocoa is acidic, around pH 5 to 6; Dutch-process is alkalized, around pH 7 to 8Natural cocoa is an acid that reacts with soda. Dutch-process is not, which is why Dutch-process recipes usually call for baking powder instead.

Questions

10 questions

Can I use baking powder instead of baking soda?

Yes — use 3 tsp baking powder for every 1 tsp of baking soda. But know what changes: if your recipe contains buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream, molasses, brown sugar or natural cocoa, the baking soda was neutralizing that acid as well as making gas. Baking powder arrives with its own acid, so the recipe's acid is left in place. The result tastes tangier, bakes up paler, and spreads less.

Is bicarbonate of soda the same as baking soda?

Yes. Bicarbonate of soda, bicarb, bicarb soda and sodium bicarbonate are all the same single ingredient — this page covers all of those names. It is not the same as baking powder, which is bicarb plus a powdered acid plus starch.

Why do my baked goods taste soapy or bitter?

Too much baking soda relative to the acid available to react with it. Whatever does not react stays in the crumb as an alkali and that is what you are tasting. Level the teaspoon or weigh it at 4.6 g, and check that the recipe really has enough acid — roughly a cup of buttermilk or a tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice per teaspoon of soda.

Can I just leave the baking soda out?

Usually no. In a cake, muffin or quick bread the soda is most or all of the rise, and leaving it out gives you a dense, flat, gummy result. In a chewy cookie, leaving it out gives you a small pale puff instead of a thin crackled disc. The only place omitting it is nearly harmless is a recipe with a very small pinch and plenty of baking powder alongside it.

How do I test if my baking soda is still good?

Mix ¼ tsp baking soda with 2 tsp vinegar. It should foam hard within a few seconds. A weak trickle means it has absorbed moisture and is spent — a common problem for an open box left in a humid cupboard, even though unopened soda keeps for years.

What's the difference between baking soda and baking powder?

Baking soda is a single ingredient, a pure base, and it only makes gas when it meets an acid. Baking powder is baking soda already mixed with a powdered acid and some starch, so it fizzes on contact with any liquid and again in the oven's heat. Baking soda is about three to four times stronger by volume, and unlike baking powder it raises the pH of the batter, which changes colour and spread.

Can I substitute baking soda in cookies?

You can bake the cookies with 3 tsp baking powder per 1 tsp soda, and you will get cookies. They will be domed rather than thin, paler at the edges, and cakey rather than chewy, because the wide crackled shape comes from the alkalinity weakening the gluten and speeding browning. If chew is the whole reason you are making them, chill the dough and buy soda.

Why do some recipes call for both baking soda and baking powder?

Because they are doing two different jobs. The soda is there to neutralize a specific acidic ingredient and to raise the pH for colour and spread; the baking powder supplies the reliable, heat-triggered lift on top. Delete the soda and you get a tangy pale result; delete the powder and it will not rise properly.

Is baking soda the same as washing soda?

No. Washing soda is sodium carbonate, a far stronger and caustic alkali sold for cleaning. Never put it in food.

Can I use potassium bicarbonate instead of baking soda?

Yes, and it is the only swap here that keeps both the gas and the alkalinity, so browning and spread stay the same. Use 1 ¼ tsp per 1 tsp of soda, because potassium bicarbonate is a heavier molecule — 100 g per mole against 84 — so a level spoon carries about a fifth less. Add about ¼ tsp salt per teaspoon replaced, since you have removed sodium from the recipe.

Tips for substituting baking soda

7 tips

Find the acid before you find a substitute. Baking soda makes no gas by itself — it needs buttermilk, yogurt, sour cream, vinegar, lemon juice, molasses, brown sugar, honey or natural cocoa to react with.
Level the spoon, or weigh it: 1 tsp is about 4.6 g. Too much soda is the single most common cause of a soapy, metallic aftertaste, because the leftover base has nothing to react with.
Test old soda with ¼ tsp in 2 tsp vinegar. It should foam hard within a few seconds; a slow trickle means it is spent.
If a recipe calls for both soda and baking powder, the soda is usually there to neutralize an acidic ingredient and darken the crumb, and the powder is there to do the actual lifting. That is why you cannot just delete one.
Whisk soda through the flour rather than dumping it into the wet mix. A lump of undissolved soda bakes into a yellow-green bitter spot.
Natural cocoa is acidic and reacts with soda; Dutch-process cocoa has been alkalized and does not. If you swap one cocoa for the other, the leavening changes too.
Get soda-leavened batters into the oven within about 15 minutes. Unlike double-acting baking powder, the reaction is largely over before the pan is warm.

Sources — National Center for Home Food Preservation (opens in a new tab), USDA FoodData Central (opens in a new tab)

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