What Happens If You Do Not Put Baking Soda In A Cake?

The use of baking soda as a leavening agent dates back to around 1700. Cakes, on the other hand, date back to ancient Egypt. Chemical leavening such as baking soda or baking powder aren't essential in a cake. If you don't use them, however, you need to find another way of leavening your cake. If you don't, your cake will be hard and flat.

Cake Texture

The texture of a cake comes from a combination of opposing forces. "Tougheners" are the ingredients that form the walls of the air holes in the cake. They give the cake its structure and strength. Tougheners include ingredients with protein: flour, milk and eggs. "Tenderizers" keep the tougheners from becoming too tough. They include sugar, fat and egg yolks. "Leaveners" produce the air inside the air holes. They include baking powder, baking soda, yeast or manually incorporated air. "Moisteners," the liquids in the cake, keep the cake from being too dry, while "driers" -- flours and starches -- keep it from getting soggy. Combining these ingredients in different proportions yields the different cake textures, from the fluffy angel food to the dense gingerbread.

Leaven

The most common leaven in cake is baking powder, with baking soda being a close second. Both are chemical leavening agents. Baking soda is an alkali; when combined with an acid like honey, vinegar or buttermilk, it produces carbon dioxide bubbles. The bubbles fill the spaces between the tougheners in the cake and the result is a light, airy batter. Baking powder, by contrast, contains baking soda, but it also contains its own acid. When baking powder is moistened, the acid and alkali combine, resulting in leavening. When an airy batter is baked, the air holes heat and expand further. The heat then toughens the protein in the tougheners, keeping the bubbles from collapsing when the carbon dioxide escapes.

Mechanical Leavening

Before chemical leavening, cakes were leavened mechanically. Creaming butter and sugar caused small air bubbles to stick to the corners of the sugar, trapped there by the butter. Beating eggs, especially the whites, trapped air inside the protein strands of the eggs. Gentle folding of flour and flavorings into the batter kept the air in the beaten eggs and creamed butter and sugar. When this air was heated in the oven, it expanded just like the trapped carbon dioxide produced by chemical leavening.

Forgetting Baking Soda

If, however, you have made a cake recipe that depends on chemical leavening and that uses no mechanical leavening, and you forget the baking soda, you will have an unleavened cake, one with no air holes. If the cake is heavy on tougheners or driers, the result will be a tough, flat cake, not unlike a sweetened brick. If the cake is heavy on tenderizers or moisteners, fats and sugar, the result will be similar to a brownie, dense and chewy. No matter what the ingredients, you will not have a light, fluffy party cake without baking soda. Party cakes are possible only because of chemical leaveners.