What is the difference between self-rising flour and cake flour?
Cake flour is a low gluten flour. Gluten is a wheat protein that gives the bread structure and stiffness. Self-rising flour is just all-purpose flour with baking powder (or other leaveners) mixed in the flour. Your recipes was hard and spongy since you used a higher gluten flour and probably over-mixed (both act to toughen the pound cake). Spongy due to the leaveners in the self-rising flour. The leaveners create carbon dioxide which acts to create little bubbles in your batter… Yes, you are correct that the self-raising flour caused the problem. You can use all pupose flour but you need to be gentle with the mixing so you don’t overly work the gluten – making the cake tougher. Here’s a link to allrecipes.com There are 20 pound cake recipes… many are rated by the users so you can see what people thought about the recipes.
