How to Make Self Rising Flour at Home: The Exact Ratio

Updated September 2026 · Baking Resources

Whisk 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt into 1 cup of all-purpose flour. That's it. By weight, that's 125 g of flour, 6 g of baking powder, and 1.5 g of salt.

Whisk it for a good 30 seconds, longer than feels necessary, because unevenly distributed baking powder is the only way this goes wrong. Then use it cup for cup wherever a recipe calls for self-rising flour, and remove that recipe's own baking powder and salt so you don't double up.

Need it for a different amount, or working from the other direction? Our free baking substitutions tool scales this and every other swap on the site.

Updated September 2026

How to make self rising flour: the ratio by cup and by gram

Self-rising flour is not a special wheat. It's soft flour with the leavening and the salt already blended in, sold mainly for Southern biscuits, pancakes, and quick breads. There's nothing in it you don't already have.

The whisking matters more than the measuring. Baking powder is denser than flour and it settles. If you dump it on top and stir twice, one biscuit gets all the lift and its neighbor gets none. Whisk for 30 seconds, or sift the three together once, or shake it in a lidded jar for a minute.

Use fine table salt, not kosher. Kosher salt crystals are flaky and won't disperse evenly through dry flour, and the volumes aren't interchangeable: 1 teaspoon of table salt weighs about 6 g, Morton kosher about 5 g, and Diamond Crystal about 3 g. Our kosher salt vs table salt guide covers the conversions.

The scaling chart

The ratio holds at every scale. These are the amounts you'll actually reach for.

Two conversions worth keeping in your head: 3 teaspoons is 1 tablespoon, and 1 1/2 teaspoons per cup means the baking powder is always half a tablespoon per two cups. Our tablespoons to cups chart handles the rest.

Don't batch more than you'll use in about three months. The flour is fine for a year, but the baking powder in it starts fading as soon as it's mixed and exposed to the flour's small amount of moisture.

Why 1 1/2 teaspoons, and when brands differ

The 1 1/2 teaspoons per cup figure is the standard American ratio, and it lines up with the commercial product. It also lands right at the top of the safe dose, which is about 1 to 1 1/4 teaspoons of baking powder per cup of flour for the flour in a finished recipe.

That sounds like a contradiction. It isn't, quite. Self-rising flour is designed for biscuits, pancakes, and scones, which are exactly the bakes that want a hard, fast lift in a short bake. Those recipes sit at the top of the range on purpose.

Where it does become a problem is in anything richer or slower. A pound cake or a sturdy layer cake made entirely with self-rising flour is usually over-leavened: it climbs fast, then sinks in the middle. Our guide on why did my cake sink covers that failure in detail.

Some bakers run 1 1/4 teaspoons per cup instead, closer to the middle of the safe range. That's a reasonable house ratio if you're using self-rising flour in cakes rather than biscuits. For biscuits and pancakes, stay at 1 1/2.

You'll also see 1 teaspoon per cup in older British books for self-raising flour, which is a genuinely different product with a lower leavening rate. Don't mix the two ratios in the same bake.

Homemade isn't quite identical, and here's the honest difference

Real self-rising flour is milled from soft winter wheat, typically 8 to 9% protein. All-purpose flour runs 10 to 12%, and the exact number depends on the brand more than most people realize. King Arthur all-purpose is 11.7%. Gold Medal is around 10.5%. A Southern brand like White Lily, which is what most classic biscuit recipes assume, is about 8 to 9%.

Less protein means less gluten, and less gluten means a more tender, shorter, cakier crumb. That's the whole point of self-rising flour existing.

So a homemade version made from all-purpose flour will be slightly chewier and slightly less tender than the bag. In pancakes and dumplings you will not notice. In biscuits and shortcake, a practiced baker might.

To close the gap, build your self-rising flour on a cake flour base or a softened blend instead:

Add the same 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt to whichever base you use. The softening method is the same one in our cake flour substitute guide.

One thing homemade will never replicate is the way commercial self-rising flour is milled and blended for consistency. That's fine. The gap is smaller than the gap between two brands of all-purpose.

Weight vs volume, because this is where it goes wrong

A cup of flour is not a fixed amount, and self-rising flour is more sensitive to it than most, because the leavening is measured against the flour.

Scoop-and-sweep is the default habit for most home bakers, and it puts 20 extra grams of flour into every cup against the same 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder. Across 4 cups that's 80 g of extra flour, which is more than half a cup, and it's the reason a batch of biscuits sometimes comes out flat for no visible reason.

The fix is a scale, or the spoon-and-level method in our guide on how to measure flour. Full weights for every ingredient are in the ingredient weight chart.

If you're weighing, the self-rising flour you make will come out to about 132 g per cup finished (125 g flour plus 6 g baking powder plus 1.5 g salt). Commercial bags of soft-wheat self-rising flour weigh less per cup, closer to 113 to 118 g, purely because soft wheat is fluffier. Weigh the flour before you add the leavening, not after, and you avoid the whole question.

Worked example: converting a recipe in both directions

The situation. A biscuit recipe calls for 2 cups of self-rising flour. You have all-purpose.

Going from all-purpose to self-rising. From the chart: 2 cups all-purpose (250 g) plus 1 tablespoon of baking powder plus 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Whisk 30 seconds. Use it exactly as the recipe says, and change nothing else. Done.

Now the reverse, which is where people get burned. A muffin recipe calls for 2 cups all-purpose flour, 3 teaspoons baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. You want to use the bag of self-rising flour in your cupboard.

Step 1, count what the self-rising brings. Two cups of self-rising flour already contains 3 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Step 2, compare. The recipe wanted 3 teaspoons of powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt. The flour is bringing exactly that.

Step 3, remove both from the recipe. Swap the flour cup for cup, and delete the baking powder and salt lines entirely.

What happens if you skip step 3: you end up with 6 teaspoons of baking powder across 2 cups of flour. That's 3 teaspoons per cup against a ceiling of about 1 1/4. The muffins rise violently, overshoot their structure, and collapse into dense craters, and they taste metallic and salty on top of it.

Now the awkward case. Say the recipe wanted 2 cups of flour but only 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder, which is common in a sturdier cake. Two cups of self-rising brings 3 teaspoons, twice what the recipe wants. There's no way to remove leavening from flour, so your options are:

• Use 1 cup self-rising plus 1 cup all-purpose. That gives you 1 1/2 teaspoons of powder across 2 cups of flour, which is exactly right. Then cut the recipe's salt by 1/4 teaspoon.
• Or don't use the self-rising flour for this bake.

That blending trick works for any fraction. Self-rising and all-purpose mix freely, so you can dial the leavening to whatever the recipe wants.

When self-rising flour is the wrong choice

Yeast breads. Never. The baking powder does nothing useful over a long rise, it makes the crumb crumbly instead of chewy, and the low protein gives you a weak gluten network. Yeast doughs need structure, which is the opposite of what this flour is built for. See types of bread for what each style actually needs.

Anything with no leavening in the original recipe. Shortbread, pie crust, pasta, pancake-thin crepes, roux, breading, shortcrust cookies. If the recipe never called for baking powder, adding it will puff things that are supposed to stay flat and short. Our why is my pie crust tough guide covers what pastry flour is actually doing.

Recipes leavened with baking soda and an acid. A buttermilk or natural cocoa recipe that calls for baking soda is relying on a specific acid and base pairing. Self-rising flour brings baking powder, not soda, and it can't do that job. If the recipe calls for both, leave the soda in and swap only the powder-carrying portion of the flour. The two are explained side by side in baking soda vs baking powder.

Anything you're salting carefully. Two cups of self-rising flour carries 1/2 teaspoon of salt whether you want it or not. In a savory bake that's usually fine. In something delicate it's a constraint.

When the recipe already worked. Self-rising flour is a convenience, not an upgrade. It saves you two measuring spoons.

Storage and shelf life

The flour outlasts the leavening. That's the whole storage story.

Test before a big bake. Drop 1/2 teaspoon of your self-rising flour into 1/4 cup of hot water. It should fizz visibly within a few seconds. A lazy trickle of bubbles means the powder has faded and your biscuits will be flat. Weak self-rising flour is still perfectly good flour, so use it in something with its own leavening and start a fresh batch.

Keep it in an airtight container away from the stove and away from steam. Heat and humidity are what kill the baking powder, not time on its own. More on this in how to store flour.

Frequently asked questions

What is the ratio for self rising flour?

One cup of all-purpose flour, 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder, and 1/4 teaspoon of fine salt, whisked thoroughly. By weight that's 125 g flour, 6 g baking powder, and 1.5 g salt. The ratio scales linearly, so 4 cups of flour takes 2 tablespoons of baking powder and 1 teaspoon of salt.

Can I use self rising flour instead of all-purpose flour?

Yes, cup for cup, but you must remove the recipe's baking powder and salt or you'll double the leavening. Check that the amounts match first: 2 cups of self-rising brings 3 teaspoons of baking powder, so if the recipe only wanted 1 1/2, blend half self-rising with half all-purpose instead.

Is self rising flour the same as cake flour?

No. Cake flour is plain low-protein flour with nothing added to it. Self-rising flour is soft flour that already contains baking powder and salt. They're both softer than all-purpose, which is why they get confused, but only one of them will make your batter rise on its own.

Does homemade self rising flour work as well as store bought?

For pancakes, muffins, dumplings, and cobbler toppings, the difference is undetectable. For biscuits and shortcake, homemade made from all-purpose flour comes out slightly chewier, because commercial self-rising flour is milled from soft wheat at 8 to 9% protein rather than 10 to 12%. Building it on a cake flour blend closes most of that gap.

How much baking powder is in a cup of self rising flour?

About 1 1/2 teaspoons, which is 6 g, along with roughly 1/4 teaspoon of salt. That's the standard American ratio and it matches what the commercial bags deliver. Older British self-raising flour recipes use a lighter rate closer to 1 teaspoon per cup.

Can I make self rising flour without salt?

Yes, and it still rises perfectly, since the salt is there for flavor rather than leavening. Just remember that a recipe written for self-rising flour assumes the salt is coming with the flour, so add the missing salt back into the recipe. For 1 cup, that's 1/4 teaspoon.

Why did my biscuits come out flat with self rising flour?

Faded baking powder is the first suspect, especially in an opened bag more than six months old. Second is scooping the flour instead of spooning it, which adds about 20 g per cup and quietly under-leavens the batch. Test the flour in hot water before you blame the recipe.

Can I make self rising flour with gluten-free flour?

Yes, using the same 1 1/2 teaspoons of baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon of salt per cup of a measure-for-measure gluten-free blend. The lift works the same way, since baking powder doesn't care about gluten. The texture is a separate problem, and our gluten-free baking substitutions guide covers the binders that fix it.

Related guides: Baking powder substitute | Cake flour substitute | What is leavening in baking | Cream of tartar substitute | Types of flour | Baking substitutions tool