Which Flours Are Must Haves?

[teacherwheart]

I am an avid baker and am getting tired of spending so much $ at the health food store for the different flours. I have only been baking gluten free for 3 months and find I use rice flours and tapioca flours a lot. Are there any other staples I should order in bulk? I was also thinking of going to either Amazon or Bobs Red mIll and ordereing, is that good? Thanks for your help.

[purple]

I switched from rice to sorghum. Need any info just google sorghum. It's alot like wheat minus the gluten. And its not grainy.

[Janessa]

My favorites are brown rice flour, buckwheat flour and tapioca, but I also use amaranth, teff, millet, and arrowroot.

[CeliacMom2008]

I love amazon for bulk...here's what's in my fridge:

Brown rice flour (I buy through amazon subscription for added discount) - we use this alot because of pizza

White rice flour - just started using for cookies

Sweet white rice - I need a little bit in my pie crust recipe

Tapioca - use it for all kinds of things (I buy this in bulk)

Potato starch - Just bought this in bulk, but can't for the life of me think why right now! Bread?? I've been doing a lot more baking, so it must be in something!

Potato flour - use a very little

Sorghum - bread (we use a lot)

Garbanzo Bean - use a lot for bread

Amaranth, arrowroot, teff, favabean - use a little for breads and misc. recipes

I've just started to do more "advanced" baking. I mostly used mixes early on. To get started I found a few recipes to try and then only bought the flours needed for those. Then if they turned into favorites I bought more of the flour and decided if I need to buy in bulk.

Good luck!

[teacherwheart]

thank u, im going to do some shopping later tonight

[Takala]

Any sort of 3 way mixture of whatever gluten-free flours you can tolerate usually works, the more kinds of flours you use in a bread, the better it seems to taste and function. I think of them as a base flour, a starch, and a hearty flavor.

So, I tend to use tapioca, rice, and nut meals, or tapioca, cornstarch, and nut meals, or tapioca, rice or corn, and sorghum. Sorghum tastes good. I grind my own nut meals in a blender because it's cheaper and fresher that way. I didn't do well with flax oil so I'm in no hurry to use flax meal, but a lot of people like it. Some prefer quinoa or buckwheat. Sometimes I make flat breads with just nut meal and eggs for low carb high protein.

I try to keep tapioca and rice on hand as the two staples. I buy nuts in big 3 or 5 lb bags at a farmer's market in bulk, pricey but much cheaper per serving that way. I think I have a little bag of almost everything in the small spare fridge in the garage.

If you see the xanthan gum cheap, you should get some of that. I also keep baking soda on hand because I use that with apple cider vinegar to leaven things.