Gluten Alternatives

What Are Some Gluten-Free Flour Alternatives?

Without the gluten there will be an issue of the stickiness needed to make breads that most of us are used to eating. Gluten-free flours are going to produce baked goods that are more crumbly than chewy. However, after a few weeks of no symptoms of gluten intolerance the new textures of gluten-free breads and other foods will not be a problem.

Some of the other choices of flour for use in recipes normally using wheat flour are gluten-free flour which is a mix of tapioca flour, rice flour, buckwheat flour and potato starch. Gluten-free flour mixes such as this normally can be used as a 100% substitute for wheat flour. Most other flours need to be mixed to be suitable for baking some baked goods but are good by themselves for use as thickeners or other reasons wheat flour would be used in the kitchen. When boiled in liquid, some flours change texture differently than wheat flour does. Wheat flour is used in most gravy recipes as it thickens when boiled in liquid while other flours such as arrowroot flour will thin.

Note that not all alternative flours available for cooking are gluten-free. Barley flour and rye flour are not wheat, but they are still of the cereal grains that contain gluten. Remember, it is not the flour one is trying to avoid but the gluten in the flour.

Consider using flours from plants such as corn (cornmeal and corn flour), potato (both potato and potato starch), white and brown rice, tapioca sorghum, buckwheat, amaranth, arrowroot and quinoa (pronounced KEEN-wha).