Flour come from ground-up grains, butter from cows, sugar from plants.
Sodium bicarbonate comes into the mix, anyway or maybe it’s the same thing as baking powder – but then again, what even is baking powder? Or is it called baking soda?
So what are they, and how are they different?
Sodium bicarbonate
Not all of us are this good at baking (Picture: Pexels)
Sodium bicarbonate is the most essential member of the mystery baking substance family also known as bicarbonate of soda, a mixture of sodium and hydrogen carbonate, is alkaline, and has a bitter taste. The main thing we use it for being – you guessed it – baking.
According to BBC Good Food, when combined with an acid such as milk or yoghurt, it produces carbon dioxide, which causes the baking mixture to expand before it’s replaced with air so we tend to use it in cakes or soda bread.
Baking powder
There are subtle differences between the powders (Picture: Pexels)
Is made up of several ingredients – and one of these is sodium bicarbonate plus an acid, as well as cream of tartar, plus a filler like cornflour to absorb the moisture.
Now that you know sodium bicarbonate needs acid to react, you can probably guess what the acid in baking powder is for – it’s like a pre-packaged version of sodium bicarbonate and the ingredients it’s often matched with, which you need only add water to and it reacts in the same way, which is why we use it in similar foods.
Baking soda
Well, it’s just another name for sodium bicarbonate.
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