Baking Soda Instead of Baking Powder for Pancakes (Grams)

A soda-only buttermilk pancake recipe that swaps baking soda in for the baking powder, with US measures and grams, a liquid check, sourced ratios side by side and sodium per pancake.

Yes: use 1 1/4 teaspoons (5.75 g) of soda for 2 cups (240 g) of flour, provided the buttermilk supplies the acid. This is our untested adaptation of King Arthur's quantities, with the 1 teaspoon of baking powder removed and 1/4 teaspoon of soda added.

For the wider list of swaps, start with the pillar, can I use baking soda instead of baking powder. This page is the pancake-sized version of the same question.

How the swap works in a batter that already has buttermilk

Swap lists such as Zestful Kitchen's and Flavorful Home's pair 1/4 teaspoon of soda with an acid like buttermilk, yogurt or sour milk, in amounts from 1/4 to 1/2 cup per teaspoon of baking powder. That suits a recipe with no acid. A buttermilk pancake batter already has 2 cups of it, so adding another 1/2 cup per teaspoon removed would count the liquid twice.

The formula here starts from King Arthur's buttermilk pancakes: 2 cups (240 g) flour, 3 tablespoons (35 g) sugar, 1 teaspoon baking powder, 1 teaspoon baking soda, 1/2 teaspoon salt, 1 large egg, 2 cups (454 g) buttermilk and 2 tablespoons (28 g) melted butter. Take out the 1 teaspoon of powder, add 1/4 teaspoon of soda in its place, and the soda becomes 1 1/4 teaspoons (5.75 g). Nothing else changes.

That dose is our math, and the sources do not agree on it. Kitchen Savvy's ratio of about 1/2 teaspoon per cup of buttermilk works out to 1 teaspoon for 2 cups (the page says there is some latitude, gives no amount per flour and does not mention pancakes). Live Eat Learn's soda-only recipe uses 2 teaspoons for 2 cups, and Zestful Kitchen's soda-alone line would give 1 1/3 teaspoons here. We did not average them.

The Food Science / Lab Kitchen Note

Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, a base. Moisten and heat it and it releases carbon dioxide. LibreTexts' Chemistry of Cooking (a university course text, not a study) says it releases about twice as much when acid is present. The gas comes off fast at the start, while the batter is still acidic at about pH 5 to 6. Once the acid is neutralized, the batter turns alkaline and the release slows, so the text says mixes must be handled promptly. Recipes differ on how long a pancake batter should rest, 5 minutes against 15, as the table below shows. Scope: the text covers cakes and muffins, with no pancake test.

LibreTexts links too much soda without enough acid to a yellowish-brown crumb and a strong soda smell. Some home bakers describe bitter pockets or an aftertaste in soda pancakes, but the causes they name (uneven mixing, missing acid, the powder itself) do not agree, so no cause is established for pancakes.

Browning is the other effect. A peer-reviewed review (El Hosry et al., Foods 2025) says pH is a key parameter in the Maillard reaction: the lower the pH, the slower the reaction, and it generally runs faster under basic than acidic conditions. The article does not mention baking soda or pancakes. Linking soda to browning is general chemistry here, not a measured pancake result.

Three leavening setups compared

This table compares published data, not finished pancakes. Where no source gives a figure, the cell says so.

The sour milk row is a per-teaspoon swap, not a pancake recipe, so it has no flour or yield. We did not convert it for this batter.

Common mistakes

Adding the swap liquid on top of the buttermilk. The 1/2 cup per teaspoon in the swap lists is for batters with no acid. Here the 2 cups of buttermilk are already the acid and the liquid, so add none.

Pockets of dry soda. Some forum posters blamed uneven mixing for bitter pockets. Whisk the soda through the flour until no specks show, and weigh it if your scale reads to 0.1 g. It's a small amount, so sloppy measuring shows up fast.

Not knowing which rest to trust. The sources give 5 minutes (Live Eat Learn) and 15 minutes (King Arthur), and Flavorful Home says a swap mix loses potency after about 15-20 minutes. This card follows King Arthur, but those facts pull in different directions, so don't leave the batter sitting longer than the card says.

Swaps and what changes

Sodium per pancake

This is our own calculation from USDA FoodData Central. USDA lists baking soda at about 27,400 mg of sodium per 100 g (the single-food record shows 27,360) and 1 teaspoon at 4.6 g, so 4.6 g x 274 mg per gram is about 1,260 mg per level teaspoon. The batch holds about 1,576 mg from the soda, 1,164 mg from the salt (USDA lists table salt at 38,800 mg per 100 g, so 3 g is about 1,164 mg) and about 672 mg from the buttermilk (148 mg per 100 g, 454 g). Salted butter adds about 180 mg (643 mg per 100 g, 28 g), the large egg about 71 mg (142 mg per 100 g, 50 g) and the flour under 10 mg.

Divide the total of about 3,670 mg by 14 pancakes and you get about 262 mg per pancake, about 11% of the 2,300 mg daily value. At 16 pancakes it is about 230 mg. The soda alone is about 98 to 113 mg per pancake over the 14 to 16 range.

Live Eat Learn's card lists sodium of 990 mg for a 3-pancake serving against a yield of 12, so its unit is unclear and we don't reuse it.

Storing cooked pancakes

No source covers storing cooked pancakes or leftover batter, so this page gives no days and no reheating times. The only handling advice we have is Live Eat Learn's: keep finished pancakes warm in a 200 F oven. Flavorful Home covers only the baking powder jar, and Zestful Kitchen says opened baking powder keeps about 6 months stored cool, dry and dark. That doesn't tell you how long a batter lasts.

Where the numbers come from

The leavening chemistry comes from two sources, and neither is a pancake study. LibreTexts, Chemistry of Cooking is a university course text and covers cakes and muffins. El Hosry et al., Foods 2025 is a peer-reviewed review of the Maillard reaction, and it never mentions soda or pancakes.

The quantities come from recipe pages and swap guides: King Arthur Buttermilk Pancakes, Live Eat Learn, Kitchen Savvy, Zestful Kitchen and Flavorful Home. Kitchen Savvy does not mention pancakes. The sodium figures are our calculation from USDA FoodData Central baking soda, table salt and low-fat buttermilk. We found no study that compares these swaps in pancake batter.

If a batch tastes bitter, the sources point to uneven mixing and missing acid, not to one proven cause. For the basics behind the two leaveners, see baking soda vs baking powder, and for the same swap in a biscuit dough, see baking soda and buttermilk instead of baking powder.