I’m sure we’ve all been there; ready to start baking a cake, pie or quick breads, only to realize that you have run out of all purpose flour or self rising flour. And of course; the recipe states exactly the type you do not have in stock!
Good news; instead of running to the grocery store (assuming it is even open at the time you want to start baking) there is an alternative solution (depending on the recipe)!
Can flour be substituted for self-raising flour (and vice versa)?
To fully understand the proces it helps if I quickly explain what the difference is between these two different types of flour.
The difference between the two is really only the added baking powder. Baking powder acts as a leavening agent so you would normally use self rising flour for recipes that require a bit of lift.
Self rising flour has the baking powder already added while all purpose flour is regular flour without it. So if you want plain flour to rise you will need to add something to it.
So naturally the type of flour you use in a recipe is important. But can a bag of self-rising flour be replaced by a bag of regular flour? That’s the question I will answer below.
Replace self-rising flour with regular flour
The easy self-rising flour substitute is obviously regular flour with the addition of baking powder. The only thing you have to get right when substituting and making your own homemade self-rising flour is the ratio of flour to baking powder.
You can use the following ratio: 500 grams (1.1 pounds) of all purpose flour + 15 grams (0.5 oz) of baking powder.
Mix the ingredients well and you have made your own self-rising flour.
Replacing flour with self-rising flour
Conversely, you cannot simply replace flour with self-rising flour. This is because self-rising flour has a rising effect.
If a recipe calls for baking powder in addition to flour, you can usually replace it with self-rising flour. If the recipe does not call for baking powder to be used in addition to the flour? Then you cannot replace the flour with self rising flour. Not without messing up the recipe.
If you can substitute it, remember that self-rising flour contains 3% baking powder. So if you need 200 grams ( 7 oz) of flour with 10 grams (0.3 oz) of baking powder, remember that you’re replacing it with 200 grams (7 oz) of self-rising flour and 4 grams of baking powder (3% of 200 grams is 6 grams (0.2 oz) , so 4 grams (0.14 oz) short of the 10 grams (0.3 oz)). So you will have less of the rising agent which you could solve by adding more baking powder to make up the equation.
