Montina All Purpose Flour Blend

[Nevadan]

I decided to go ahead and try the Montina All Purpose Flour Blend that our local Wild Oats store started carrying. (You can also purchase Montina products from their website at www.montina.com ) My wife used this to make bread and we both thought it was outstanding. It yielded a great texture as well as excellent taste. The Montina All Purpose Flour Blend is a blend of Indian (American) rice grass flour, tapioca flour, and white rice flour. The Indian rice grass has become popular as a drought resistant grain crop for the Montana area in lieu of regular wheat due to recent doughts. After developing this as a product, the company discovered that it is also gluten-free and has begun to focus on the gluten-free market. According to their package info, they process and package this in a dedicated gluten-free facility.

Their package has a recommended bread recipe; however, my wife substituted 1 1/2 cups of rice milk in place of their recommended water and powdered milk since we're trying to minimize the use of cow's milk, and since we don't use anything "hydrogenated" for other health reasons, she substituted real butter (even if is a milk product) in place of "butter flavored shortening". She used a bread machine to bake the bread and the result was outstanding - as good as any home-made bread I've had, even those with gluten. The texture is very good (not crumbly) and the taste excellent. The visual appearance looks more like a mult-grain bread.

It's nice to see more good gluten-free products arriving to market.

George Simmons