I love flours!

I love flours!

Most people get all excited when their significant other brings them flowers. Not me. I get all excited when my husband brings me flours. The fact that he brings me flours instead of flowers is part of the reason I married him. There are many reasons that flours get me all worked up. One of them is that there are so darned many of them! When you are a baker, you appreciate that they all bring something different to the table, and you want to try them all. Being gluten free gives you a good excuse to try something other than boring old General Mills All Purpose Flour (insert yawn here). I will share a few of my favorites with you, and the ones that I think any bad kitty needs to keep in their pantry.

#1: Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Baking Mix!
You must keep some of this in your pantry! I recommend at least 2 pounds if you don’t bake a lot, and 4 pounds if you do. Trust me, I put my pantry space where my recommendations are. I have about 40 pounds of this stuff. Of course, I am a freak, and I have a lot of dessert blogs to do, so there you go. If you happen to have a Costco card, they sometimes have 5 pound bags hella cheap, and that is a good time to stock up. Now before you get too happy thinking this stuff will solve all your gluten free worries, it won’t… unless you doctor it up. I ALWAYS add 1 teaspoon of xanthan gum per 1 cup of GFBM (as I think of it). I also compensate with more sweetener. Just a bit, but it does a long way in covering up the nasty, beany taste that GFBM gets from the fava bean and garbanzo bean flour it has in it. Yuck!

#2: Rice Flour, brown and sweet
Brown rice flour is so Birkenstock it’s great… it has a gritty texture and a healthy taste. I use it where I would use whole wheat flour. You will need to add some xanthan gum to this, too. Start off with 1 teaspoon per 1 cup until you find what works for you. Sweet rice will need the exact same thing. It’s fun to combine with brown rice flour, in the same way you combine white wheat flour with whole wheat. I like the combo, and use this in my cinnadoodle recipe I shall post soon.

#3: Sorgum Flour
I have just started using this flour, but it tastes creepily like wheat flour, yet is gluten free! Again, add the same amount of xanthan gum as the other flours, but track some of this down. If you have access to an Indian grocery, try there, because it will be much cheaper than at Whole Paycheck (Whole Foods).

#4: Buckwheat Flour
Buckwheat flour is a poser, it has no wheat. It is a type of seed, and a damn tasty seed at that. I love using this in my muffins and pancakes. It has a dark color and an earthy flavor that you can’t find anywhere else. Buy some and use it. Add some molasses and maybe some maple syrup as a sweetener and it will knock your socks right off. Trust me.

So here are some flours to try out! Enjoy your gluten free, vegan baking!