Flour Substitute

[Guest LuvtoLaff06]

Is there a good flour substitute I could use for breads (white) and biscuits? Something I can just sub for regular flour in all my recipes without having to also use other ingredients like tapioca, xanthum, etc.

[tarnalberry]

While others may be more useful, my limited gluten-free baking experience says "no". Because there's no flour that has the protein content or fat content properties that wheat does. Because no gluten-free flour has gluten, which makes wheat act the way it does - texture wise and performance wise. Bette Hageman's cookbooks have the best discussion about flour subsitutions so far. For some things, like cookies, you can get away with simple subsitutions, but it's very limited. (Though, I should add, if you don't have a problem with oats - and I know that's controversial - and have a source of uncontaminated oat flour (like grinding McCann's), a number of recipes (quick breads, particularly) you can directly subsitute oat flour for wheat flour. (Works for oatmeal cookies too.) )

Tiffany

[kejohe]

Unfortunately, there are no substitutes that will work straight across the board for regular wheat flour, at least none that I know of. Rice flour is the most widely used in combination with the xanthan gum, but you often get better results using a combination of several flours.

My best suggestion is to mix your own flous and store them ready to use. For instance, Bette Hagman's featherlight mix works very well for most cookies, it's a combo of rice, tapioca and potato flour. I mix mine about 10# at a time and that lasts me a while. Then just use the amount called for in a standard recipe and add about 1 tsp xanthan gum depending on the recipe. It saves tons of time and saves pantry space instead of having 12 different containers of misc flours all over.

Hope this helps a little and good luck,

Kathleen

[angel-jd1]

Tiffany is right....the gluten part of wheat flour is what makes it "Stickey" and what makes it fluffy when you bake . That is why when you are baking gluten free goodies, you have to use the xantham gum or garr gumm.flours like tapioca and rice have their own stickey substances that help hold baked good together. Hope that info helps!!

-Jessica

[granny]

Unfortunately, there are no substitutes that will work straight across the board for regular wheat flour, at least none that I know of. Rice flour is the most widely used in combination with the xanthan gum, but you often get better results using a combination of several flours.

My best suggestion is to mix your own flous and store them ready to use. For instance, Bette Hagman's featherlight mix works very well for most cookies, it's a combo of rice, tapioca and potato flour. I mix mine about 10# at a time and that lasts me a while. Then just use the amount called for in a standard recipe and add about 1 tsp xanthan gum depending on the recipe. It saves tons of time and saves pantry space instead of having 12 different containers of misc flours all over.

Hope this helps a little and good luck,

Kathleen

Kathleen,

If it's permissable, will you include the amounts of each flour in Betty Hagan's Featherlight mix. Like a cup of this and 1 1/2 c. of that. Every day I promise myself that I'll get one of her books from the library but haven't made it yet. I hear so much about her here and would love to try some of her stuff. Thanks, Granny

[kejohe]

Here you go:

Bette Hagman's Featherlight Mix (makes 12 Cups of mix)

4 C rice flour

4 C tapioca flour

4 C Cornstarch

4 Tbs potato flour

Bette Hagman's Gluten Free Mix (makes 12 Cups of mix)

8 C rice flour

2 2/3 C potato starch

1 1/3 C Tapioca flour

I miss typed earlier and didn't catch it until you quoted me, but the mixture that I use for most of my cookie recipes is the gluten free mix, not the featherlight. Sorry about that. Either will work, but using the featherlight I think is better for cakes and will tend to make cookies a little more crumbly. Either way though, they are both essential in my kitchen. Hope this is helpful and happy baking!

[granny]

Here you go:

Bette Hagman's Featherlight Mix (makes 12 Cups of mix)

Bette Hagman's Gluten Free Mix (makes 12 Cups of mix)

Either will work, but using the featherlight I think is better for cakes and will tend to make cookies a little more crumbly. Either way though, they are both essential in my kitchen. Hope this is helpful and happy baking!

kathleen,

Thanks so much for the recipes. Granny

[trummie]

Thanks for posting the featherlight formula!

trummie

[kejohe]

No Problem, just keep in mind that the more you play around with your recipes the better they will get. For some things, I increase or decrease amounts depending on how long I want to cook it for or how crumbly or chewy I want it to be. Practice makes perfect!

Some tips (in my experience):

More cornstarch makes it crumble more

More tapioca makes it more gluey

More potato and/or rice will make it starchier

These are not hard a fast rules, but they seem to be true in most cases.

[trummie]

Kejohe...I finally got out the recipe for the featherlight flour mixture and need to double check an ingredient. Is it four tablespoons of potato flour or potato starch?

Thanks....trummie

[ROYAL BLUE]

It is potato flour

Tracy

[aber]

Here you go:

Bette Hagman's Featherlight Mix (makes 12 Cups of mix)

4 C rice flour

4 C tapioca flour

4 C Cornstarch

4 Tbs potato flour

Can anyone confirm the typo in "The Gluten-Free Gourmet Makes Dessert", page 28, where the Featherlight Rice Flour Mix (Featherlight Mix) says 1 teaspoon per cup, but the examples show tablespoons instead?

I see from your quote that tablespoons might be the correct measure?

Dave

[Laura]

Has anyone else found the Glutano brand gluten-free flour mix? I've only made one thing with it and that worked pretty well, but I haven't tested the mix enough to say much about it. And it's not cheap.

When I have some time, I make up big batches of different flour mixes and freeze them. That way I don't have to try to mix it each time I want to bake. I haven't tried the featherlight, but the Wendy Wark blend is really good. I found that it stays moist much longer than any other mix I've found, which is good since one of my big problems with gluten-free flours is that things go stale quickly.

[angel-jd1]

I keep all of my gluten free flours in the refrigerator. It seems to help them last a little longer for me.

-Jessica

[justmel74]

Bette also has a bean flour mix that works as well as the featherlight. I dont have my cookbook right now to give the ratios. But, you can buy the featherlight mix and the four flour (bean) mix from authentic foods (www.authenticfoods.com) if you dont feel like mixing it yourself. I know the gluten free mall (www.glutenfreemall.com) also sells these mixes, but it is more expensive than authentic foods. Authentic foods also has a good variety of other baking supplies (but not necessarily of pre-packaged gluten free products).

[oreyes]

Hi............

Has anyone tried the Bob's Red Mill All Purpose gluten-free Baking Flour? I've made a banana bread (the recipe's on the package) and thought it was quite tasty. You do have to add Xanthan Gum but that's the only other ingredient besides the ususal ones that you would use to make banana bread. It's a combination of garbanzo flour, potato starch, tapioca flour, "sweet" white sorghum flour and fava flour. I've used it as a thickener in soups and other things and it works quite well. It's available at our Albertson's here, as is the McCanns oatmeal that many have talked about.

Just food for thought.....................Judy

[donnalois]

I took a gluten free cooking course a couple of years ago from the most amazing chef at our local college. One of the most important lessons I learned was flour is substituted by weight, not volume. I then add 3/4 teaspoon xanthum gum per cup of Gluten free flour mix used. Bette Hagman books have a nice little chart in them that lists the proper weight of all the gluten-free free flours so a bit of simple math and fractions and you can convert any of your favourite gluten-free free mixes for All Purpose Flour. Good Luck!

Donna

[hsd1203]

Good call Judy, I also like the Bob's Red Mill "homemeade wonderful gluten-free bread mix" it tastes great and will even come out well in a bread machine. It is made with garbanzo flour, potato starch, corn starch, sorghum flour, tapioca flour, fava flour, and potato flour... and it even comes with its own xanthan gum and yeast! I take a bag or two with me when I'm travelling to stay at someone's house where I know all these fun flours won't be available. Makes life a lot easier! You can make it with cow or soy milk or water, my family and I have tried it all 3 ways and it comes out great and (as we accidentally found out) it is great lumped onto cookie sheets and baked as rolls too. Yay Bob!

Also, on the same vein, Bette's sesame bean bread is pretty stinkin' yummy too. A gluten-free friend and I ate, ahem, half a loaf of this (oops ) in an afternoon while cooking (something else I recommend for single-living gluten-free people, if you have a gluten-free friend or even an adventurous non-gluten-free friend who's into healthy eating, have a cooking afternoon once a week or 2 weeks and make a ton of food together and freeze it so you have dinners / lunches for the next week or 2... it saves a ton of time and money, and helps fend off bad take out decisions).

Happy bread eating (speaking of which, I'm getting kinda hungry)

Heather