Not self-raising flour

December 26, 2007 4:40 AM

Can self-raising flour be turned into plain flour?

It's boxing day and I have no plain flour for my yorkshire pudding.

I have a load of self-raising flour though. Is there any way I can 'neutralise' the self-raising part?

Vinegar?

posted by popcassady to Food & Drink (8 answers total)

Not really.

The leavening agent in self-rising flower is baking soda. I'm not familiar with Yorkshire pudding...is there some sort of leavening agent in it? Baking soda, perhaps? If so, you might be able to leave that ingredient out and hope the self-rising flower can do the job. That's a real shot-in-the-datk, of course.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:49 AM on December 26, 2007

I think you're out of luck. I've made something similar to Yorkshire Pudding (german pancake that also gets all its leavening from eggs and steam) and it really didn't work well when I accidentally used self-rising flour. The texture was all wrong.
posted by leahwrenn at 5:11 AM on December 26, 2007

It's actually salt and baking powder (not soda) in self-rising flour. Like Thorzdad says you can normally omit the salt (1/2 teaspoon per cup) and baking powder (1 1/2 teaspoon per cup) if they are called for as additional ingredients in the recipe. However in this case I think you're out of luck if there's normally no baking powder in yorkshire pudding...and as leahwrenn suggests it would really mess with the texture.
posted by cabingirl at 5:52 AM on December 26, 2007

It's actually salt and baking powder (not soda) in self-rising flour.
Well...my bag of Gold Medal self-rising flour lists baking soda as the leavening agent.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:31 AM on December 26, 2007

well, since baking powder is baking soda plus an acid (cream of tartar, if you're making single acting baking powder by yourself), I'm not totally surprised that baking soda would be listed. (But at least when I've needed to improvise self-rising flour, I've added baking powder and salt to ordinary flour.)
posted by leahwrenn at 6:41 AM on December 26, 2007

You could possibly react the bicarb out, by using vinegar or heating the flour till it decomposed (above 60C), but according to wikipedia, this would leave the acids in the baking powder, which can affect the taste.

Do you not have a neighbour you could borrow some from?
posted by kjs4 at 6:45 AM on December 26, 2007

Probably too late, but I think it would be OK to use your flour, as there are yorkshire pudding recipes that actually call for it. Otherwise I would mix up the batter with hot milk in the hopes that if there's double acting baking powder (a second, heat activated leavening acid), the hot milk would help with deflation. I'd stir up the batter really well, let it rest for about 30 minutes, and then stir again before filling your muffin tin or whatever.
posted by oneirodynia at 6:25 PM on December 26, 2007

I just had my trusty, never-(and I mean never)-fail yorkie recipe fail to rise twice in a row and I was pissed, cursing the gods, impugning the cookware, and so on - then I happened to notice I'd accidentally picked up a bag of self-raising flour at the market instead of my usual stuff. (I switched over to cursing and impugning the flour and the market respectively.)

So, no, for anyone visiting this thread in the future, it doesn't work, and "Yorkshire Brick" is a dish no-one savors.
posted by Wolfdog at 4:35 AM on April 12, 2008