Our previous flour mixes all have a key ingredient that is the xanthan gum. This time, I want to present you with our gum-free gluten-free flour mix which doesn’t depend on that at all! This can be a great relief for lots of people that don’t have easy access to this type of gum. Regardless of that, there are certain precautions that you must take since these gums are used to replace the gluten that is missing from the starches and flours that we use.
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!
