The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science

As it turns out, the reaction occurs better in alkaline
environments, which means that once you’ve added enough
baking soda to neutralize the acid in a batter or dough, any
extra you add will work to increase browning. So I made
five batches of pancakes using identical batters consisting of
flour, baking powder, egg, buttermilk, melted butter, salt,
and sugar and varying amounts of baking soda, starting with
none and increasing it by ⅛-teaspoon increments up to a full
½ teaspoon per batch. Each pancake was cooked on a
preheated griddle for exactly 1½ minutes per side. The
results very clearly demonstrate the browning effect of
baking soda.