What Does Baking Soda Do In Cookies? (2024)

FAQs

What Does Baking Soda Do In Cookies? ›

A recipe that calls for both ingredients probably contains an acid, but not enough to completely leaven the batter or dough. Baking soda also serves another important purpose when it comes to cookies: It encourages spreading by raising the mixture's pH, which slows protein coagulation.

You technically can leave out baking soda in certain recipes (like chocolate chip cookies or pancakes) in a pinch, but you need to understand that your finished product will not be as light and fluffy as the recipe intended. Unless you have no other option, you really should use a leavening substitute.

Baking powder is made of baking soda plus cream of tartar and cornstarch. Baking powder can be substituted for baking soda by tripling the amount of baking powder.

Too much baking soda will result in a soapy taste with a coarse, open crumb.

Cornstarch helps product soft and thick cookies. Using more brown sugar than white sugar results in a moister, softer cookie. An extra egg yolk increases chewiness. Rolling the cookie dough balls to be tall and lumpy instead of wide and smooth gives the cookies a bakery-style textured thickness.

Remember also that too much baking soda in a recipe and not enough acid will still result in a soapy, metallic taste in the baked good.

Oven temperatures are a crucial factor in baking. If your cookies consistently come out flat, you may have selected the wrong baking temperature. If you bake cookies using too much heat, the fats in the dough begin to melt before the other ingredients can cook together and form your cookie's rise.

Brown sugar, meanwhile, is dense and compacts easily, creating fewer air pockets during creaming—that means that there's less opportunity to entrap gas, creating cookies that rise less and spread more. With less moisture escaping via steam, they also stay moist and chewy.

“You can count on [it for] a softer and more tender crumb.” “A bonus benefit is it prevents the cookie from spreading too much while baking,” he adds, noting that a more compact, thick cookie typically yields a chewier outcome. But incorporating cornstarch isn't the only tip to make a cookie more palatable.

Baking powder: Baking powder can be used to replace baking soda, though not at a 1-to-1 ratio. Because the former is not as strong as the latter, it's important to use three times the amount of baking powder as baking soda. Be aware, a slightly bitter, off-putting taste might result from using that much baking powder.

Why are my cookies crumbly and not chewy? ›

Too Much Flour

It doesn't take much—in this case, my mom and I added just 3/4 cup extra flour to the dough. The cookies tasted good, but were dry and definitely crumbly. To make the cookies more tender, Betty Crocker suggests adding 2 to 4 tablespoons of softened butter, or 1/4 cup of sugar, to the batter.

Baking soda also serves another important purpose when it comes to cookies: It encourages spreading by raising the mixture's pH, which slows protein coagulation. This gives the dough more time to set before the eggs set, which results in a more evenly baked cookie.

Add a Bit of Baking Powder – If you want really chewy, fluffy cookies, you might also want to mix a little baking powder in with the mixture. It works in a slightly different way from baking soda and the two ingredients can produce amazing results when used together.

For baked goods that don't require too much leavening, such as cookies or pancakes, it's actually OK to leave out the baking soda completely — they just won't be as light and fluffy. If you do go this route when making pancakes, Gan recommends pouring less batter into the pan to cover the same surface area.

I would use 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda for every cup (125 grams) of flour. But that might vary depending on other ingredients. If the batter is very dense you'd want to either increaase that amount or supplement it with a little baking powder so it is activated by the heat of cooking as well as any acid in the recipe.

It is possible to make cookies without baking soda and banana bread without baking powder. It's important to note that your batter or dough will not rise when baked in the oven, and the resulting treats will be dense and not airy.

The recipe for The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies claims that the addition of a small amount of water, “creates steam as [the cookie] bakes, working with the baking soda to puff the cookies up.” Others claim mixing warm water with baking soda helps remove clumps and disperses it with the other ingredients in the recipe.

As the butter melts, the cookie's structure loosens, so that the water in the dough is able to combine with the baking soda, dissolving it. The baking soda then reacts to the acidic components present in brown sugar, creating gases that cause the cookie to rise.

Baking soda is a leavening agent whereas cornstarch is a thickener. These two ingredients may look similar, but they have very different purposes in cooking and cannot be used interchangeably.