This gum-free gluten-free flour mix will prove to be a really nice and versatile mix that can be used from cakes, pies, and even bread. Since it contains dried milk, it would not be dairy-free, but this ingredient is essential to provide softness to the dough. Anyhow, there is a nice part of it. This mix is extremely easy to make and requires easy-to-get ingredients.

Xanthan gum is the key ingredient for gluten-free cooking for long. Thanks to this gum, we can achieve nice crumbs and make bread that doesn’t fall apart. The downside of using this gum is that it can provide an undesired chewiness or gumminess in our preparations. I am not saying that it is bad, it is just bad in excess, so the key is knowing how to use it, or how to complement is with other ingredients!

Several options are available to replace or reduce and complement xanthan gum. A commonly used complementary ingredient is the powdered psyllium husk. I really love to use the psyllium husk since it provides less gumminess texture than the xanthan gum, incorporates a lot of fibre to the dough (it’s basically pure fibre!), and allows to get a desirable texture and form. Like all fibres, it absorbs a lot of water. You can try the experiment of mixing a spoon of psyllium husk with water in a glass and wait for a few minutes. I won’t tell you what happens, so I don’t ruin you the fun (jeje).

Other options are to replace the xanthan gum with other gums such as the agar gum and guar gum. Also, you can prepare a replacement made from tapioca starch, called “tapioca gum”, which is elaborated by combining water with tapioca starch to hydrate it and then evaporate the extra water, creating a dense slurry that can give structure to bread preparations. I won’t go deep with these since I don’t use them often.

Coming back to the flour mix recipe, we will use five ingredients to build the mix. White and brown rice flour, potato and tapioca starch, and non-fat milk powder. The proportions are as follows:

• 57% white rice flour
• 18% brown rice flour
• 16% potato starch
• 8% tapioca starch
• 3% skim milk powder

As always, I recommend you making a batch of flour so its easier to use (believe me that we will use this one a lot ).

For 1kg of flour (you can make the amount you want by multiplying the amounts):

• 565 g fine white rice flour
• 175 g fine brown rice flour
• 160 g potato starch
• 75 g tapioca starch
• 25 g skim milk powder

Just be sure to homogenize it well!

The post Gum-Free Gluten-Free Flour Mix appeared first on The Gluten-Free Corner.

I consider this blend not the simplest one because it uses whey isolate powder. The whey isolate will help give structure to the bread. Be aware that the whey isolate is different from the whey protein, you won’t get results with that one!. It has proven to be quite useful for gluten-free baking since we have to resort to quite a lot of starches to make our blends.

This blend consists basically of:

• 51% rice flours
• 36% starches
• 2.2% xanthan gum
• 11% unflavored whey isolate

What I recommend, is to make big batches, homogenize it, and store it in an air tight container so it’s faster whenever you want to make any recipe.

It is always better to weight everything you use, since cups or tsp/tbsp can be quite inaccurate measurements.

According to the proportions, you can make batches of 450 g of flour for the best results. You can always calculate to make the exact amount by the way.

This table shows you how many grams of each component you need to use to make the blend. I am including the approximate calculations for 100 g and 300 g just in case.

Hope you like it!

The post Gluten-Free Bread Flour Blend appeared first on The Gluten-Free Corner.

The big question… is there any better than the other?

I have tried a variety of different flour blends when trying my recipes, and I arrived at the conclusion that the best one is the one that you can make at home, but why?

Well, the first and most obvious one is the cost. Pre-made gluten-free flours are absurdly costly and MANY of them are really bad (and some don’t even work, which is worse). They are many times unbalanced and have nasty flavours. Usually, they say that you can replace cup-for-cup the wheat flour for any recipe, but of course, they can’t do that simply because of how these flours work. Be wary that although you can make a cheaper flour blend at home that works well, there are also more complicated and special ones that skyrocket the price as well.

Another issue is the versatility of creating your own flour. Having the knowledge of what each flour, starch, gums, and other things that we incorporate into our blend opens up the possibility of creating a specific blend for each preparation that we want to make. Of course, one cannot imagine having to create and think a blend for each recipe, it’s unrealistic (ain’t nobody got time for that!). That is why we usually create a few blends that we know work best for either bread or baking for example.

The last issue I want to mention is allergies. Commonly, celiac people are suceptible to multiple allergies, it is not only gluten that hurts them. A clear example is that celiacs are propense to develop lactose intolerance. And not just that, I see all the time people allergic to eggs, nuts, corn, sulphites or whatever you can think about. That is why it is very important for us to know our body and make a blend that won’t hurt us.

The reason behind telling you this is because I want to raise the standards in taste, texture, and quality that we are usually forced to lower because of carrying on a gluten-free life. When I was diagnosed, I was completely stunned by how things tasted or even the texture they had. Everything was weird, usually dry and flavourless. It was really hard to find something that I could say: “It is ok since it is gluten-free”. I just couldn’t settle with that, and started studying, practicing and experimenting to make food taste and feel good so nobody would notice that they were gluten-free. Food that was just delicious, period.

The conclusion I reached was that I needed my own flour blend to make things right, and now, it is your time to start trying to make your own food taste as good or better than it was made with gluten.

In the next posts, I will be showing you different blends that have worked for me and that you can use in the recipes shown here in the blog. Don’t worry, I’ll start with an easy one

See you around the blog!

Remember, if you have any questions or doubts just send me an email and I’ll answer as soon as possible!

The post The truth behind gluten-free flour blends appeared first on The Gluten-Free Corner.