Hi, all!

Occastionally, I’ll see a recipe I’m considering that calls for self-rising flour.  I looked up the sub, and it seems that what I always find is 1c flour + 1.5 t BP + .5 t salt.

When I refered to a typical, but random, Rose recipe (her fave yellow cake on this site under Recipes), it uses only 1/2 t BP for TWO cups of flour, which doesn’t correlate at all—the published sub would call for 1T BP (6x the amount) for the same amount of flour, so the published sub kind of gives me the heebie jeebies as in “way too much baking powder = collapsed cake.”

Any thoughts on this?

Thanks!

—ak

Rose’s Favorite Yellow Cake also has 1/2 tsp of baking soda, which has about 4 times the leavening power of baking powder.  That removes a good deal of the discrepancy.

Thanks, CT, but these recipes that use self-rising flour also have baking soda!!!! My quandry springs back at me!

Anne in NC - 04 April 2012 01:02 PM

Thanks, CT, but these recipes that use self-rising flour also have baking soda!!!! My quandry springs back at me!

Can you give an example?

Ok, here’s a “for instance”:

1 cup Wesson oil
1 1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 cups self rising flour
2 (1 oz. each) bottles red food coloring
1 cup buttermilk
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. baking soda

In this case, the self-rising flour is about the equivalent of 3 tsp of BP and twice the BS as Rose’s recipe.

I don’t know the answer to your question, but in reading how Cooks Illustrated determines the proper amount of Baking Powder/Soda, they mainly use experiment.  They have observed that heavier batters need more leavening than lighter batters.  In this particular recipe, the self-rising flour probably has greater gluten development than the cake flour that Rose calls for, so perhaps more leavening is needed to stretch those gluten strands.

Hey, CT!

Here’s one I’m sort of rolling around:

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1462/sticky-stem-ginger-cake-with-lemon-icing?pager.offset=60

Ooh!  Let me guess!  Yours was for a red velvet cake?  I wonder how I could guess .....  : )

I see what you mean about heaver batters—although yours doesn’t look heavey, per se, the one I’m looking at does, with all the molasses and golden syrup.

I find the whole concept of self rising flour to be perplexing!  Leavening just doesn’t seem like a one-size-fits-all sort of thing.  I have seen some recipes that call for part self-rising and part plain flour, so maybe that’s how they compensate.

Thank you again for your thoughts!  If you have any more, I’m definitely interested!!!!!

—ak

Unfortunately this gets more complicated by the type of BP used. Rose’s recipes usually rely on Rumford’s which is an ‘early rise’ BP. My guess is that the self rising flours probably use ‘late rise’. Depending upon baking temps and timing the ‘late rise’ may require more. We had a good thread/link on this a while back. With the variety of BP/flour it is tough to compare apples/apples and come up with a general formula.

Anne in NC - 04 April 2012 02:28 PM

although yours doesn’t look heavey

No, but self-rising flour will have a higher gluten content than cake flour.  It’d be interesting to compare the baking powder content to recipes designed for all purpose flour.

Gene - 04 April 2012 02:30 PM

My guess is that the self rising flours probably use ‘late rise’.

Pillsbury Self Rising flour contains “Baking Soda, Sodium Aluminum Phosphate, Monocalcium Phosphate’ which I believe is double-acting baking powder.

I switched from Rumsford to a double-acting BP and I really didn’t notice any performance difference.  I’m sure these products are calibrated to achieve some standardized level of performance.

I swear, I think the language barrier is easier to overcome than the baking barrier with other countries.

Search this forum for our previous discussion on this topic and you will find in that study of biscuits there was substantial difference between products.

One thing I would like to add is mixing method- the creaming method involved adding air into the butter and eggs, so less baking powder is needed. If you’re mixing everyting together, you will need extra lift via some more baking powder.

Edit: Now I see that the last message was in about two months ago! I hope it’s okay I updated a thread that age

Chime in anytime, McB!!!!!!!  Appreciated!