All About All Purpose Gluten Free Flour:
Recipes for all purpose flours are easy to find, and there are several pre-mixed blends available as well . If you try one that doesnt work for you, try another they are all created differently! Heres my homemade flour ratio recipe if you cant use my pre-made blend for some reason.
Dont get discouraged or feel too overwhelmed to bake now that youve gone gluten free. It can be quite easy and delicious when you have the right ingredients to take the guess-work out of it for you!
Pre-made blends make it even easier, so skip right to Pre-Made All Purpose Gluten Free Flour below, if you just want to know how to get the best gluten free results every time without making your own blend.
Three: Cook The Fat/flour Mixture
Place the butter into a medium pan. Heat it until the butter melts or the oil becomes hot, but not smoking. Add the flour to the melted butter/hot oil. It turns into a paste right away! Heres where the magic happens! You want to cook the flour mixture. This adds flavor to your gravy and gets rid of the raw flour taste.
As you cook, about three to five minutes, look for the fat/flour to darken slightly. As you cook it, the fat/flour thins out a bit. This is normal.
Better Batter As Cup4cup Hack
Nothing compares to the light and flaky pastry that you can make with that Cup4Cup makes. Since its such a spendy blend, I found a way to hack Better Batter gluten-free flour into a pastry flour, as another Cup4Cup alternative:
- 113 grams Better Batter Gluten-Free Flour
Since Cup4Cup is a dairy-containing flour, I also created a dairy-free way to hack Better Batter into pastry flour:
- 104 grams Better Batter Gluten Free Flour
- 18 grams gluten free cornstarch
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Gluten Free Yeast Bread Baking Help:
- One caveat when converting recipes from wheat to gluten free: while the transition can be seamless in many types of recipes, the directions for yeast breads are quite different.
- For example, gluten-y yeast breads require extensive kneading, a rise, a punch down and another rise before shaping and baking. Not so, for gluten free yeast breads! In fact, if you do all those things to gluten free yeast bread, youll punch the life right out of it!
- For gluten free yeast doughs, you 1) mix 2) shape 3) rise and 4) bake. Thats it. Thats also why there is a gluten free setting on many bread machines the steps are very different for gluten free yeast bread.
- So my recommendation is to either stick with gluten free yeast bread recipes rather than trying to convert from wheat recipes, or at least to start out with gluten free yeast bread recipes until you get the hang of it and know what to expect the dough consistency to be like and how it should behave.
- I have many yeast bread recipes here on my site, so search for anything from hamburger buns to pumpernickel, baguettes to sandwich bread, bread sticks to beer bread youll find those recipes here, tried and tested! .
- if youre still having trouble getting your yeast breads to rise, try adding 2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar to help activate the yeast.
Gluten Free Starch Flours
- White rice flour I always use this for about 50% of my mix, its usually easy to find in the grocery store
- Potato starch use up to 20%
- Tapioca starch I dont use more than 10% of this in any mix, in my experience too much can alter the texture of your baked goods as it makes a sticky mixture when wet.
- Arrowroot I like this gluten free flour and would use up to 20% in my mixes. The only downside is the cost, its really pricey compared to the other starches
- Cornstarch I would use up to 20%, I try and use only non GMO corn which can be hard to find, so I usually use another starch instead.
Also Check: Vegan And Gluten Free Desserts
Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
Our special gluten free blend of whole grain and brown rice flours make it easier than ever for all your culinary creations.
| Iron | 4% |
Whole grain sorghum flour, brown rice flour , whole grain millet flour, rice flour. Contains 2% or less of the following: food starch-modified, whole grain quinoa flour, xanthan gum.
More Grain Grinding Challenge Series Posts
The Grinding Challenge Series is getting me to use my Mockmill grain mill! Heres what were covering:
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Read Also: Gluten Free Dairy Free Dinner
How To Make A Freshly Milled 100% Whole Grain Gluten
Ive just started experimenting with this 100% whole grain gluten-free flour blend, which I reverse-engineered from Jovial Foods whole grain blend . Theirs does include xanthan gum, so if you are making actual bread with my version, like sandwich bread, youll want to be careful and may potentially have to include some xanthan gum or psyllium husk as a binder. See below for more on gums.
We used this blend in our homemade whole grain gluten-free tortillas, except the test was with quinoa instead of teff. The quinoa has a rather strong, bitter flavor, so Im looking forward to trying the tortillas with teff. If you dont have teff, put quinoa in place of it.
I also tried this GF blend in biscuits, but I have to admit they were pretty crumbly and not that great. They were definitely good for gluten-free biscuits when they were hot, but the leftovers were a mess. Finding something that is actually whole grain, gluten-free, and works as well as whole wheat flour is a tall order!
With a little math, you can use this blend with freshly ground or commercial flour.
If your recipe in grams, simply multiply the total # of grams by the percentage. So maybe you need 250g of GF flour blend. Youll take 250 x 0.5 = 150g of sorghum. Then 250 x 0.166 = 50g of teff, and so on. Measure the whole grains and mill it all up.
Alternatively, you can do what I do and simply mix up a big batch like this:
- 1/2 c. chickpea flour
- 3/4 c. brown rice flour
- 1 c. teff flour
- 3 c. sorghum flour
The Bean And Legume Flours
Soya Flour
Soybean flour is full of protein and is produced from ground, roasted yellow soya beans. It retains moisture well and has good thickening properties, which makes it a good addition to bread mixes, pastry and sauces. It has a strong flavour however, which is not to everyones taste.
Gram Flour
Gram flour is produced from ground chickpeas and is an essential ingredient in Indian and other cuisines from the Indian subcontinent. It will usually be the flour used to make pappadoms, onion bhajis and North African socca flatbread. Gram flour offers a good texture and wholesome flavour to flat breads and batter.
Gram flour has a good protein content and is also high in carbohydrate and fibre. It also provides good quantities of calcium, magnesium, folate, vitamin B6 and potassium to the diet.
Fava Bean Flour
Fava Bean Flour is the flour made from ground Fava beans . It has a distinctive earthy flavour, which is best matched with savoury dishes. Nutritionally, it has a high protein content and is also a good source of iron and fibre. Fava bean flour is generally used in combination with garbanzo/gram flour for gluten free baking, however is not easy to source in the UK and thus is not a regular in the gluten free flour blend.
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The Right All Purpose Gluten Free Flour
I began using Better Batter all purpose gluten free flour many years ago. It has superfine rice flour so its never gritty and always combines properly with other ingredients. Its properly balanced to create baked goods that brown, rise, and taste like they should.
I know that not everyone can or is willing to buy Better Batter. Thats why I created a mock Better Batter recipe, for you to make your own approximation that will work in every recipe I create that calls for an all purpose gluten free flour. Ive repeated that recipe below, for convenience.
Since that mock Better Batter blend calls for quite a number of ingredients, I have also tested my bread flour using my Make It Simpler All Purpose Gluten Free Flour blend. That blend contains only 4 ingredients.
Although I do urge you to use Better Batter or create the mock blend, the bread flour will work with the Make It Simpler blend. Suddenly, I find myself really wishing I had come up with a better name for that simpler blend.
How To Make A Simple Diy Gluten
This one I developed while working on gluten-free pumpkin muffins, which is a recipe that is so forgiving its not even funny. I can even use just straight brown rice flour and it still works. However, this blend also does great in our gluten free pancakes, homemade granola bars, and even makes these homemade biscuits gluten-free, except they are not as fluffy as with pastry flour of course.
The measurements are for flour itself, so you can make this blend easily whether you use a grain mill to grind your own or buy the flour commercially.
To have a nice gluten-free blend that can sort of act like wheat flour and even substitute in recipes for wheat flour like I mentioned above, you need to have a balance of protein and starch. Some say you dont need starch at all, but most people seem to fall on the side of starches being necessary. Arrowroot is a pretty clean starch as they go, so I dont feel too badly about only one-quarter of this recipe being arrowroot starch.
- 2 1/2 c. arrowroot starch
I do usually make this with freshly ground grains, but Ill make it in bulk and freeze a big gallon bag of it for easy baking later.
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Tips For Making Your Own Gluten Free Flour Blend
Hereâs a few quick tips for making a gluten free flour mix that works well for almost all gluten free baking recipes!
How To Convert A Wheat Flour Recipe To Gluten Free:
- When you want to convert a favorite family recipe, or a gluten free recipe calling for several different kinds of flour, all you need to do is to use a truly all purpose gluten free flour. Theyre all different, but most who try my gfJules All Purpose Gluten Free Flour prefer it its won #1 Gluten Free All Purpose Flour 3 years in a row in the consumer choice awards!
- Simply total up the amount of flour called for in the recipe and use that amount of the all purpose gluten free flour instead. Do NOT add more xanthan gum or guar gum if a recipe calls for it and youre using my Jules Flour or another blend that contains gums its already in the flour and adding more will just make the recipe gummy.
- I do not suggest using a WHOLE WHEAT or Stone Ground Wheat recipe and trying to convert it to gluten free the baking properties are so different that the recipe structure will be thrown off. Stick to converting recipes calling for all purpose flour instead for better results.
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Dont Want To Build Your Own Blend
Use Better Batter gluten free flour everywhere my recipes call for an all purpose gluten free flour. You can purchase it on their website , and youll get the best price when you buy in bulk.
You can also use Cup4Cup gluten free flour blend, but it is relatively high in starch and wont produce best results in my recipes . But it will still work anywhere my recipes call for an all purpose gluten free flour.
Other blends: Im afraid that I dont care for Jules Gluten Free , Tom Sawyer blend , Namaste , Krusteaz , Bobs Red Mill , Pillsbury Betty Crocker Rice Flour Blend , or Trader Joes Blend .
If you use any of these blends, especially Bobs Red Mill or Namaste, your recipe simply will NOT turn out.
King Arthur Flour multi-purpose gluten free flour blend is perhaps the most widely available blend, and I would give anything to be able to use and recommend it. Unfortunately, its very high in starch so its unbalanced, and the rice flour in it is grainy. *whomp whomp whomp*
Want to build a blend but dont want to do any math? Scroll down for a downloadable Excel file with a calculator for each blend!
