Your Favorite Flours, And Why

[huevo-no-bueno]

I'm relatively inexperienced with gluten free baking (and I'm no-eggs), and I'm experimenting with what flours taste good to me and produce a texture I like when baked in a muffin recipe, all other things being equal. Having eliminated a number of flours and pre-packaged blends that I don't like, I'm down to the following:

Brown Rice flour

Quinoa flour

Sorghum flour

Millet flour

Amaranth flour

Coconut flour

Tapioca starch (can't tolerate cornstarch or potato starch)

I'd like to know what your favorites are in this group, and what they're best for (yeast bread, muffin, cake, or cookies?)

Do any of them go especially well together? Do any of them clash?

I'd love to hear your opinions.

[laurelfla]

Well, I don't know how helpful my reply will be, but I just wanted to say how wonderful the Authentic Foods superfine (which is fun to say) brown rice flour is. Annalise Roberts's (if you like baking, the most awesome cookbook out there!) flour blend specifically mentions it, and one time I ran out (it's not cheap) so I substituted regularly ground brown rice flour and my banana bread came out all gritty. The superfine texture really does make a difference, at least for baking (though for pizza crust, it's not as good).

I've never used coconut, amaranth, or quinoa flour, so I'll be interested to hear what people have to say about them. My main mix for baking desserts/muffins comes from Annalise's book -- brown rice flour, potato starch flour and tapioca flour, but I bet you could substitute the potato starch for something else. Maybe someone else will have some good ideas.

[missy'smom]

I've always been a fan of whole grains but there's just something about the brown rice flour that doesn't work for my palate. I really like the sorghum flour. I've had it as the main flour and as part of the flour blend with rice and starches. Both were good, but I prefer the latter, it makes a denser product when used as the primary flour. I use it in breads and muffins. In my apple crisp topping it helps take away that starchy, floury taste an balance it flavor wise. When I use it I sometimes decrease the sugar by a bit because it has a natural sweetness to it and we prefer things lightly sweet. You might want to check out this website. Carol Fenster uses sorghum in her blend. I havent tried her recipes but I have used one of the blends. Open Original Shared Link

[MNBeth]

I'm pretty new, too, but so far I like a combo of sorghum and millet, with some starches added, but not nearly as much as most recipes recommend. Here's my weird method:

For about 3/4 of the flour called for I'll use roughly two parts sorghum to one part millet.

For the last fourth I'll use some combination of tapioca, corn, and/or potato starches. Haven't sorted those out very well, yet. I'm getting rave reviews using this combination in my old favorite muffin recipes. In my experience so far, even w/an Authentic Foods flour blend, the rice flour is gummier than I like in muffins and such.

(And if you can do soy, soy yogurt is great in muffins - I use it to sub for buttermilk in one recipe and also in my favorite Cook's Illustrated muffin recipe, which calls for yogurt. Obviously we're also dairy free, at least for now.)

I'll probably play around with some other things eventually, but for now I'm too relieved to have found a system that works consistenly for me.

Hope you get there, soon!

[huevo-no-bueno]

I'm pretty new, too, but so far I like a combo of sorghum and millet, with some starches added, but not nearly as much as most recipes recommend. Here's my weird method:

For about 3/4 of the flour called for I'll use roughly two parts sorghum to one part millet.

For the last fourth I'll use some combination of tapioca, corn, and/or potato starches. Haven't sorted those out very well, yet. I'm getting rave reviews using this combination in my old favorite muffin recipes. In my experience so far, even w/an Authentic Foods flour blend, the rice flour is gummier than I like in muffins and such.

(And if you can do soy, soy yogurt is great in muffins - I use it to sub for buttermilk in one recipe and also in my favorite Cook's Illustrated muffin recipe, which calls for yogurt. Obviously we're also dairy free, at least for now.)

I'll probably play around with some other things eventually, but for now I'm too relieved to have found a system that works consistenly for me.

Hope you get there, soon!

Thanks for everyone's replies. I totally agree with using less starch--tapioca turns into a weird kind of gel if the mix has too much of it.

A question for everyone: how does tapioca starch compare to arrowroot starch?

[Wonka]

Sorghum flour - used in a mix adds a lovely flavour to baked goods. I like Garfava flour (never notice a beany flavour lots complain about but then I like beans), Keep Tapioca, rice and potato for lighten up mixes. Haven't tried Quinoa flour but I've just bought a bag, it is suppose to be higher in protein as well (the higher protein flours help the mixes get closer to wheat flour protein levels).

[huevo-no-bueno]

Laurel--your cat is so cute!!

Here's the results of the next round of testing.

I made more muffins with my eggless control recipe. This time, I was curious to see how each flour behaved with tapioca starch, since all mixes seem to benefit from addition of a starch, and how they all behaved with coconut, since coconut is really nutritious and has unique properties. All were in equal parts of each, for simplicity and ease of comparison.

My favorites out of the bunch, in no particular order:

Sorghum & tapioca 1-1

Millet & tapioca 1-1

Quinoa & coconut 1-1

Amaranth & coconut 1-1

Quinoa & coconut seem to be the driest. Amaranth is the moistest. Millet, sorghum, and tapioca were somewhere in between.

I think next time I will try two blends:

Equal parts of Sorghum, Millet, and Tapioca starch

Two parts Amaranth, one part Quinoa and one part Coconut

Rice flour was disappointing, and didn't rise as much as the other flours.