[teacherwheart]

My 2 year old and I were just diagnosed and I wanted to start buying flour online in bulk since I am an avid baker and he loves his baked goods. What flours do you suggest I get, the staples? And where should I buy them? Amazon, Bobs' Red Mill? Any suggestions would be great.

[CMCM]

I use Pamela's Baking and Pancake mix for a bunch of things. A 4-lb bag costs anywhere from $13.99 to 17.99. The best store rate I've found is Whole Foods at $13.99. The health food stores seem to cost the most. You can get it at Amazon for about $12.15, and they have a thing you can sign up for where you are shipped every 3, 6 or 9 months automatically, and if you do that it ends up being $11.50 or so. I've been trying to get a fix on how much I use, so I'm tracking usage right now to decide what I want to do.

I haven't made a huge number of things yet with the Pamela's mix, but so far so good. The drop biscuits are good, the pancakes are wonderful (no one guessed they were gluten-free), and I do a wonderful banana bread with it (again, no one can tell it's a gluten-free recipe, it's moist, normal crumb texture, just great), the waffles are also good. Pamela's site has a bunch of additional recipes, plus a lot of recipes are on the back of the 4-lb bag.

The Pamela's mix has a nice mix of flours, and tastes really good. I haven't tried cakes etc. with it yet.

I have a wonderful cookbook called "Gluten Free Baking Classics" by Annalise Roberts, about $11 on Amazon. She set out to create the recipes we all love in good gluten-free versions. She utilizes a mix of flours from Authentic Foods, and found that Authentic's super fine rice flours make all the difference in creating good substitutes for gluten foods. I found these flours at a local health food store at $11.50 for a 3 lb bag. You can order on Amazon or from Authentic Foods, but with shipping costs the price goes way up. I just got the cookbook and the flour but haven't tried them yet. However, if you read all the Amazon review the recipes sound fabulous, and from looking thru the cookbook I have to say she's got it all covered.