Difference Between Baking Soda and Baking Powder (Pancakes)

Baking soda needs an acid, baking powder brings its own. See how each one works in a single pan of buttermilk pancakes, with grams per teaspoon and the sodium math.

Pancakes look simple. A white powder goes in, a stack comes out. But the two white powders in the pantry do different jobs, and the pancake pan is a good place to watch them work.

So this page explains the difference through one recipe: buttermilk pancakes that use both. The doses are adapted from King Arthur's buttermilk pancakes. The method and the explanations are ours.

• You get a gram weight for every spoon of leavener, so the dose is repeatable.
• You see which ingredient reacts with which, and why a recipe would ask for both.
• You get the sodium math per teaspoon, labeled as our own calculation.

Baking soda vs baking powder in one pan

Here's why this works. King Arthur describes baking soda as sodium bicarbonate, a base with a pH of 8. On its own it has nothing to react with. Baking powder is a complete mixture: soda plus a dry acid, which King Arthur names as cream of tartar, plus starch. This page says only that much about what is inside powder, because no source opened for it gives the share of soda.

Add that up for the pancakes. The buttermilk is the acid in the bowl, and it reacts with the soda. King Arthur also says that when a recipe has both, there is usually some acid, but not enough to react with the soda alone, so the powder does most of the leavening while the soda neutralizes the acid and adds some lift.

Soda also changes more than the rise. Two review sources report that soda gives deeper color and a bit more spread, while a version leaning on powder alone comes out paler, puffier and less chewy. That is what bakers report, not a measured result.

The Food Science / Lab Kitchen Note

Except where a source is named, this section is standard food chemistry.

Baking soda is NaHCO₃. When it meets an acid, it releases carbon dioxide (CO₂), and that gas is what lifts a batter. The buttermilk is the acid here. Once the acid is used up, any leftover soda just sits in the batter, which is why a recipe with too much soda can taste bitter.

Baking powder carries its own acid, so it needs only moisture and heat. King Arthur says grocery-store double-acting powder reacts twice: once when it dissolves in the batter, and again when the batter hits the heat. The practical lesson for pancakes: don't let the batter wait.

A bit of our own arithmetic on the doses. The recipe uses 1 teaspoon of soda for 2 cups of buttermilk, which is 1/2 teaspoon per cup. That lines up with Kitchen Savvy's figure of about 1/2 teaspoon of soda per cup of buttermilk when the recipe has no other acid, though that site notes that published ratios vary by up to 2 to 1 and that molasses or natural cocoa call for more.

One general rule of thumb in baking guides is about 1 teaspoon of powder and about 1/4 teaspoon of soda per cup of flour. The page we found for that rule (Sally's Baking Addiction) wouldn't open, so treat it as a rule of thumb, not a law. These pancakes sit differently from it: 1 teaspoon of powder and 1 teaspoon of soda for 2 cups of flour is half the powder and twice the soda. Buttermilk is why.

Grams and sodium per teaspoon

King Arthur's weight chart lists 1 teaspoon of baking powder as 4 g and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda as 3 g. The chart has no full-teaspoon row for soda, so we double it: 1 teaspoon is 6 g. Other pages on this site use a figure of 14 g per tablespoon, about 4.7 g per teaspoon. For this page we use the King Arthur weight, 6 g.

The sodium figures come from USDA FoodData Central, which lists baking soda at 27,360 mg of sodium per 100 g, and double-acting baking powder made with sodium aluminum sulfate at about 10,600 mg per 100 g. The per-teaspoon numbers below are our math from those two values and the King Arthur weights.

Spread over 15 pancakes, that is about 138 mg per pancake from the leaveners, before the salt and buttermilk. At 14 pancakes it would be about 148 mg and at 16 about 129 mg. Other powder formulations, aluminum-free ones included, differ, so the product label wins.

Soda, powder or both compared

The table below compares published data about the three options, not finished bakes. Where no source gives a figure, the cell says so.

Buttermilk pancakes: what each dose does

The full list and steps are on the recipe card above. These are the points that matter.

The soda is there for the buttermilk. Without it, the acid in the buttermilk has nothing to react with, and the batter loses both gas and the soda's effect on color. The powder is there for the rise. The two sit in the flour together, so whisk them in well before the liquid goes in.

Use food-grade, aluminum-free baking soda, and level every spoon. A kitchen scale takes the guesswork out of the heaping-spoon problem, and the weights on the card are what turn this page's numbers into a repeatable dose.

One more thing the explainers skip: bake right after mixing. Gas starts forming as soon as the soda meets the buttermilk, so a batter that sits has already spent some of it.

Common mistakes

Too much soda, or no acid. Extra soda doesn't add lift. Once the acid is used up, basic chemistry says the leftover soda stays alkaline and can taste bitter, so keep the buttermilk and the doses on the card.

The quiet mistake is letting the batter sit. The soda starts reacting on contact, and the powder's first reaction starts when it gets wet. Pour the batter onto the heat soon after you mix it. Trust the timer, not your nose.

King Arthur says equal amounts of soda and powder can't be swapped, because soda is the stronger of the two. So swapping them one for one is a guess. Use the sourced amounts on the baking soda instead of baking powder page.

What if you don't have what the recipe calls for

Storing the pancakes and the leaveners

Cool leftover pancakes, then keep them covered in the fridge. No fridge or freezer time is sourced for this recipe, so this page gives none.

Check the leaveners, too. A weak box makes less gas than the recipe counts on, and the does baking soda go bad article has the fizz test for soda, plus the warm-water test for powder.

Where the numbers come from

The chemistry and the double-acting description come from King Arthur Baking, a specialist baking site (blog post, 2021). It is an explainer, not a trial, so it has no sample size. The gram weights per teaspoon come from King Arthur's ingredient weight chart, a reference chart. The pancake doses come from King Arthur's buttermilk pancake recipe, a published recipe whose page doesn't explain why it uses both leaveners. The explanation of the two doses is ours.

The sodium values come from USDA FoodData Central, a government nutrient database that lists values per 100 g. The per-teaspoon and per-pancake figures are our math on top of it, not measurements, and one powder value was read through a mirror site. The buttermilk-to-soda ratio comes from Kitchen Savvy, a food site that notes its own ratios vary. The color and puffiness observations come from two review sources, so they are what bakers report and not measured results. We found no controlled comparison of soda-only, powder-only and combined pancakes.