overheard someone say baking soda is optional and now my eye is twitching

I was in the grocery line yesterday in Tulsa and this lady was telling her friend she just skips baking soda in cookies because it 'doesn't matter.' I almost dropped my carton of eggs. Baking soda is not a suggestion, it's the whole reason your cookies spread and don't turn into hockey pucks. I learned that the hard way back in 2019 when I tried a 'healthy' recipe that swapped it out and my batch came out dense and flat, like little tan rocks. That one mistake cost me a whole afternoon and a bag of good chocolate chips. Has anyone else run into people who think leavening agents are just some optional fancy thing? What do you even say to that without sounding like a jerk?

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the_derek23d ago

Ditch the baking soda next time and those cookies will spread like cold butter on warm bread, all flat and sad. I bet that lady's cookies could double as doorstops, probably why she's skipping it in the first place. Leavening agents get treated like a garnish when they're the literal backbone of the bake.