How to Make Chocolate Chip Cookies Without Baking Soda

Short answer: yes, you can make chocolate chip cookies without baking soda. Use a recipe written for baking powder, which already contains a bicarbonate plus the acid it needs to release gas; the recipe below uses 2 tsp (10 mL) of baking powder and no baking soda. Even with no leavening at all, cookies still bake: in a lab test they came out harder, paler and spread a little less than cookies made with baking soda.

Quick answer: what you need

Need	Product	Price
Chocolate chips for the dough	Organic dark chocolate chips 70%, 1 kg	$45.95
Chocolate to chop into chunks	Bassan Sur del Lago 71% dark couverture, 5 kg	$273.00
Non-stick baking sheet liner	Pavoni SPV43 non-stick silicone mat	$29.99

What baking soda does in a cookie

In a lab test, baking soda made the cookie alkaline, softer, more coloured and slightly wider. The study in Food Chemistry: X (Chen et al., 2020) baked the same cookie formula with and without 2% sodium bicarbonate (baking soda, on flour weight) and measured the difference:

Measurement	No leavening	2% baking soda
Cookie pH	6.05	9.26
Spread ratio (width/thickness)	0.71	0.75
Hardness (force to break)	11,258 g	7,638 g
Redness (a*)	0.02	2.39
Yellowness (b*)	15.87	20.25

In plain terms: the cookie with baking soda was about a third softer (7,638 g against 11,258 g), redder and yellower, and spread slightly more. The authors suggest the yellower colour comes from compounds that form at alkaline pH.

Baking powder vs baking soda

Baking powder is a bicarbonate with its acid already mixed in. Canada's standard for baking powder (Food and Drug Regulations, section B.03.002, in force from 2006 to December 2024) described it as a combination of sodium or potassium bicarbonate, an acid-reacting material and starch or another neutral material, yielding at least 10% of its weight as carbon dioxide.

That is why a recipe built on baking powder does not need baking soda: the powder brings both parts of the reaction. We do not give a conversion ratio for swapping one into a recipe written for the other, because we have not found one from a source we can verify; it is safer to bake a recipe written for baking powder, like the one below.

The type of leavening also changes the result. A study in the Journal of Food Science and Technology (Canali et al., 2020) baked the same biscuit with four leavening agents: ammonium bicarbonate gave the least hard biscuit with the most spread, the two baking powders based on tartaric acid (cream of tartar and a grape-based leavening) gave a crisper texture, and the most common baking powder (diphosphates) gave results in between.

Recipe: soft and chewy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies (no baking soda)

This recipe is published by Dairy Farmers of Canada and uses baking powder only. It makes 5 dozen cookies; preparation takes 20 minutes and each batch bakes about 15 minutes.

Ingredients

• ½ cup (125 mL) butter, softened
• 1 cup (250 mL) packed brown sugar
• ½ cup (125 mL) corn syrup
• 2 eggs
• 1 tbsp (15 mL) vanilla extract
• 3 cups (750 mL) quick-cooking rolled oats
• 2 cups (500 mL) all-purpose flour
• 2 tsp (10 mL) baking powder
• 1 tsp (5 mL) salt
• 1 cup (250 mL) milk
• 2 cups (500 mL) semi-sweet chocolate chips

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 375°F (190°C). Lightly butter or spray 2 large baking sheets, or line them with parchment paper.
2. Beat the butter and sugar until light and fluffy; beat in the corn syrup.
3. Beat in the eggs until light and creamy, then the vanilla.
4. In a separate bowl, combine the oats, flour, baking powder and salt.
5. Stir the dry ingredients into the butter mixture alternately with the milk: 3 additions of dry ingredients and 2 of milk.
6. Stir in the chocolate chips.
7. Drop heaping tablespoons (15 mL) of dough onto the sheets, at least 2 in (5 cm) apart.
8. Bake about 15 minutes, until golden around the edges yet soft in the centre. Let the sheets cool and repeat with the remaining dough.

Make ahead

Drop the dough onto baking sheets and freeze until firm, then store it in an airtight container for up to 3 months. To bake from frozen, let the dough stand 10 minutes at room temperature on the prepared sheets and bake as usual, up to 18 minutes if needed.

Choosing the chocolate

The recipe calls for semi-sweet chips. For a darker cookie, our organic 70% dark chocolate chips are made for this job: their product sheet lists cookies first among their uses. They are organic, vegan, kosher, gluten-free and dairy-free according to the label, which also states they may contain peanuts, tree nuts and soy. For chunks instead of chips, chop Bassan Sur del Lago 71%, a single-origin Venezuelan couverture made in Canada, with notes of fruit, wood and nuts.

For more on which chocolate suits which bake, read our guide to choosing the best chocolate for baking.

View baking and confectionery chocolate →

A second no-soda recipe: peanut butter chocolate chip cookies

Dairy Farmers of Canada also publishes "Puffy Peanut Butter Buttons", leavened with baking powder only.

• 2½ cups (625 mL) all-purpose flour and ¾ cup (180 mL) whole wheat flour
• 2 tsp (10 mL) baking powder and ½ tsp (2 mL) salt
• 1¼ cups (310 mL) peanut butter and ⅓ cup (80 mL) softened butter
• 1⅓ cups (330 mL) sugar, 2 eggs and 2 tsp (10 mL) vanilla extract
• 1 cup (250 mL) milk
• 2 cups (500 mL) miniature semi-sweet chocolate chips

Beat the peanut butter, butter and sugar until fluffy, beat in the eggs and vanilla, then stir in the combined dry ingredients alternately with the milk (3 additions of flour, 2 of milk) and fold in the chips. Drop teaspoonfuls at least 1 in (2.5 cm) apart and bake at 375°F (190°C) for about 10 minutes, rotating the pans halfway, until the edges are firm and the centres soft. For larger cookies, use heaping tablespoons at least 2 in (5 cm) apart and bake about 15 minutes. Store airtight up to 5 days, or freeze up to 3 months.

Cookies without baking soda or baking powder

They still bake, but expect a firmer, paler cookie. In the Chen et al. (2020) test, the cookie with no leavening at all was the hardest of all six versions (11,258 g), had the lowest pH (6.05) and the palest colour. The same study tested potassium bicarbonate as an alternative to baking soda: 1.0% potassium bicarbonate gave the cookie with the highest overall acceptance in the tasting panel.

Baking chocolate chip cookies in volume

For a café or bakery, consistency matters more than any single batch. Two things help: the same liner on every sheet, and the same chocolate in every batch.

• Pavoni SPV43 non-stick silicone mat → $29.99 CAD. Lines sheet pans for no-stick baking without spraying or oiling.
• Pavoni SPV53 non-stick silicone mat → $35.99 CAD. The same SPV non-stick surface in another size.
• Bassan Sur del Lago 71%, 5 kg → $273.00 CAD. Also sold in 20 kg cases for high-volume operations.

View silicone baking mats →

How AI can help your production

Give an AI assistant the recipe above and ask it to scale the 5-dozen batch to your daily count, convert the cups and spoons to grams using the weights you measure on your own scale, and calculate the ingredient cost per cookie from your purchase prices. You can also ask it to build a bake log (oven, tray position, time, colour, spread) so every shift bakes the same cookie, and a freezer rotation sheet for the make-ahead dough.

AI organises the information; tasting and the final decision stay with your chef.

Baking chocolate and tools at Zucchero Canada

We supply bakeries, cafés, pastry kitchens and home bakers across Canada from Calgary. For cookies, each product has a clear job: organic 70% chips (1 kg) for chip cookies at home or in small batches; Bassan 71% couverture in 5 kg bags or 20 kg cases when you chop chunks or bake in volume; Pavoni SPV silicone mats to line your sheets. Silicone mats count toward free shipping within Canada on eligible orders; chocolate is excluded from free shipping (details in the FAQ). Ordering for a bakery? Contact our team about volume orders.

Baking chocolate | Fine chocolate | Silicone baking mats | Best chocolate for baking | Oil vs butter in chocolate baking

This article is for information only. Every business is different: draw your own conclusions based on your own expectations, budget and goals, and talk to qualified experts before you decide or invest.

Sources: Dairy Farmers of Canada, "Soft & Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies" and "Puffy Peanut Butter Buttons" (dairyfarmersofcanada.ca); Chen G., Hu R., Li Y., "Potassium bicarbonate improves dough and cookie characteristics through influencing physicochemical and conformation properties of wheat gluten", Food Chemistry: X 5 (2020) 100075; Canali G. et al., "Influence of different baking powders on physico-chemical, sensory and volatile compounds in biscuits…", Journal of Food Science and Technology 57 (2020) 3864–3873 (abstract); Food and Drug Regulations (Canada), C.R.C., c. 870, s. B.03.002, version 2006-03-22 to 2024-12-17; Zucchero Canada product sheets (organic 70% chips, Bassan Sur del Lago 71%, Pavoni SPV mats).