I’ll never forget the first time I made vegan biscuits using a regular buttermilk recipe, I replaced the butter with margarine and the buttermilk with unsweetened almond milk. They turned out a little dry, dense, and very bitter with a bit of a soapy taste.
My mom asked if I had mixed them enough because she thought they might taste like there were pockets of baking soda. I knew that I had so that shouldn’t be the problem. However, my Mom figured out that if she used baking powder in the microwave vegan biscuits, they weren’t bitter. I didn’t understand why that was until years later.

The Baking Soda and Vinegar Principle

Have you ever done the science experiment where you mix baking soda and vinegar, and it bubbles? That’s actually how baking soda works in baking. The baking soda goes through a chemical reaction with an acidic ingredient in your dough, and the resulting carbon dioxide bubbles get trapped in the dough and expand in the heat of your oven.

The acid should completely neutralize your baking soda; otherwise, you’ll have a soapy or bitter taste in your biscuits, or whatever you are making. My problem was that I replaced all the acidic dairy ingredients with much less acidic vegan ingredients so that the baking soda was never fully activated. So why does baking powder work as a substitute? Baking powder is just baking soda with an acidic powder already added to it.

The Sourdough Substitution Rule for Vegan Baking

For veganizing baked goods: Sourdough, whether active or discard, is acidic enough to replace buttermilk (or whatever liquid acid your recipe calls for) and activate the baking soda.

Remember: 1 cup sourdough = 1 cup liquid + 1 cup flour

The Math in Practice: If a recipe calls for 3 cups of flour and 1 cup buttermilk, you would use 1 cup sourdough and 2 cups flour (3 cups total flour).

This is a simple concept, but it revolutionized my baking! Though I am not vegan, lots of my friends are, and I enjoy cooking good food for them. I also like knowing what to substitute if I am short on certain ingredients. Plus, it uses up a lot of sourdough discard. Happy Baking! Have you ever had a recipe flop because of a missing acid? Share your story in the comments below!”

Bonus Kitchen Chemistry: Why Baking Soda and Vinegar Are Useless for Cleaning

Since the baking soda and vinegar neutralize each other, or in other words, cancel each other out. Mixing them for cleaning is not effective; you take away both the vinegar’s and the baking soda’s cleaning power, making them both useless. If you are going to use them to make homemade cleaning products, use them separately.

“As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singeth songs to an heavy heart.”

Proverbs 25:20

Note: “nitre” = baking soda