Flour cause for denseness and bread taste?

[SweetSerendipity]

So I have been trying my hand at baked goods in the past couple of years. I think I'm okay with pies, but cakes from scratch are not coming out right! I have made both yellow and white cakes from scratch in the past two weeks, and both were somewhat flat, dense, and actually tasted like bread. My mom suggested to me that it is probably the flour that I'm using. It's a store brand from Save A Lot. I have never considered the fact that a brand could make the difference, as flour is flour, right? I can't think of any other factor in the recipe that could be off. I check and recheck as I'm baking, and all other ingredients except sugar were brand-name. I also have not had any issues with temperature in my oven for anything. Could flour be my issue? I really want to bake a good cake from scratch!

 

[chefjon]

Can you post the recipe that you use? It's highly unlikely it's the flour, unless you are over beating it to develop gluten. You could try using cake flour. Other reasons for dense cake is because the protein and gluten structures collapse due to the weight of fats and sugars. So maybe you are adding too much sugar and butter. If you are using baking soda or baking powder, there is a chance that they have expired and no longer can make cake rise. Also, with baking soda, you need an acid to help the reaction to make cake rise and become fluffy.

 

[tangela]

I actually heard somewhere that if you're baking a cake, the type of flour actually matters. Also my fiancé's mom swears that if you put the flour through a sieve of some kind as you're measuring it out, it makes it fluffier and lighter. I haven't tried that myself personally so I can't back it up with personal experiences, but she's been baking FOREVER and is really good at making cakes and pies and such.