Conversion
Self-Rising Flour: US cups to milliliters
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The answer
1 US cup of self-rising flour
= 240 ml
Spooned and leveled. 1 US cup weighs 125 grams. Includes 1.5 teaspoons baking powder and 0.5 teaspoon salt per cup, baked in.
Common amounts
Quick reference for the amounts most recipes call for.
| US cups | milliliters |
|---|---|
| 1/4 US cups | 60.0 ml |
| 1/3 US cups | 79.2 ml |
| 1/2 US cups | 120 ml |
| 2/3 US cups | 161 ml |
| 3/4 US cups | 180 ml |
| 1 cup | 240 ml |
| 1 1/2 US cups | 360 ml |
| 2 US cups | 480 ml |
| 3 US cups | 720 ml |
| 4 US cups | 960 ml |
By measurement system
A "cup" is not one fixed size. Different countries use different volumes. Here is one cup of self-rising flour converted to milliliters for each system.
| System | 1 cup | 1 tbsp | 1 tsp |
|---|---|---|---|
| US Legal | 240 ml | 14.8 ml | 4.93 ml |
| US Customary | 237 ml | 14.8 ml | 4.93 ml |
| UK Metric | 250 ml | 15.0 ml | 5.00 ml |
| UK Imperial | 284 ml | 17.8 ml | 5.00 ml |
| Australia | 250 ml | 20.0 ml | 5.00 ml |
| Metric / EU | 250 ml | 15.0 ml | 5.00 ml |
| Japan | 200 ml | 15.0 ml | 5.00 ml |
The Australian tablespoon is 20ml, not 15ml like everywhere else. This is the most common conversion mistake when adapting AU recipes.
Why this conversion is tricky
Self-rising flour fools cooks because it is not really one ingredient, it is three: soft wheat flour, baking powder, and salt, premixed in a ratio that the manufacturer chose for you. The flour base is typically a low-protein Southern-style soft wheat (around 8 to 9 percent protein), which packs differently than all-purpose. Its particles are finer and more rounded, so they settle into a measuring cup with less air between them than the jagged, higher-protein particles of bread flour. Add to that the leavening: baking powder is denser than the flour around it (about 0.9 g/ml versus the flour's 0.5), and salt is denser still. The two heavy additives migrate downward in the bag over weeks of sitting on a shelf, which means the cup you scoop from a fresh bag and the cup you scoop from a half-empty one can carry different amounts of leavening even at identical weights. The King Arthur Baking Company ingredient weight chart pegs a US cup at 125 grams (0.521 g/ml spooned and leveled), and that number assumes a freshly mixed, evenly distributed bag.
The single most common mistake is treating self-rising flour as interchangeable with all-purpose by weight without removing the leavening from the recipe. A cook sees a biscuit recipe calling for 250 grams of self-rising flour, has only all-purpose on hand, swaps it gram for gram, and ends up with dense, salt-shy biscuits because every cup of self-rising contains 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder and half a teaspoon of salt baked in. Going the other direction is just as bad: substituting self-rising into a recipe written for all-purpose without pulling out the called-for baking powder and salt produces metallic-tasting, over-risen, then collapsed baked goods.
Measure self-rising flour by stirring the bag first. Take a fork or whisk and agitate the top three or four inches of flour in the bag for a good ten seconds to redistribute any settled leavening. Then spoon the flour lightly into your dry measuring cup until it mounds above the rim, and sweep the excess flat with the back of a knife. Do not tap the cup, do not shake it, and never scoop the cup directly into the bag (that single motion can pack in 30 to 40 extra grams, which throws off both the flour-to-liquid ratio and the leavening dose). If you have a kitchen scale, use 125 grams per cup as your reference and skip the volume measurement entirely; this is the only way to get reproducible biscuits.
Density matters most in recipes where the leavening dose is the entire point of using self-rising flour: Southern buttermilk biscuits, drop biscuits, scones, dumplings, fluffy pancakes, and quick breads like banana bread or beer bread. These recipes are formulated around the assumption that every cup of flour delivers exactly 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder. A 20 percent overpacked cup means 20 percent more leavening than intended, which causes biscuits to rise dramatically in the oven and then collapse into dense, gummy pucks once the gas escapes. It also matters in fried-chicken dredges and shortcakes, where the residual leavening creates the signature crisp puff. Yeast breads, pasta, and roux are not appropriate uses for self-rising flour at all; the baked-in salt and baking powder will interfere with yeast activity and seize a roux.
To make your own self-rising flour from all-purpose, whisk together 1 cup (125 grams) of all-purpose flour with 1.5 teaspoons of baking powder and half a teaspoon of fine salt. The all-purpose substitute will produce a slightly chewier biscuit than true self-rising made from soft Southern wheat (White Lily and Martha White are the benchmark brands), because all-purpose runs 10 to 12 percent protein versus self-rising's 8 to 9. For tender biscuits and scones, swap in cake flour for a quarter of the all-purpose to drop the effective protein. Going the other direction, to substitute self-rising for all-purpose in a recipe, omit the baking powder and salt that the recipe calls for, then proceed as written; if the recipe uses baking soda (because of buttermilk or molasses), keep the soda but still drop the powder and salt.
Frequently asked questions
How many milliliters are in 1 US cup of self-rising flour?
1 US cup of self-rising flour equals 240 milliliters, computed using a density of 0.521 grams per milliliter sourced from King Arthur Baking Company ingredient weight chart.
Why does a generic converter give a different answer?
Generic converters assume one milliliter equals one gram, which is true only for water. Self-Rising Flour has its own density. Using the correct density gives ingredient-specific accuracy that matters in baking.
Does the cup size matter for self-rising flour?
Yes. A US legal cup is 240 ml, a US customary cup is 236.59 ml, a UK metric cup is 250 ml, an Australian cup is 250 ml (with a 20 ml tablespoon), and a Japanese cup is 200 ml. The conversion table on this page shows the answer for each system.