GF flour question
Posted by fufuberry on Jan 03, 2010 · Member since Jul 2008 · 1786 posts
I have used Bob's Red Mill all purpose flour blend for a couple of baking projects now, and I am unpleased.
For some reason everything has kind of a ....slight bitter after taste and odd consistency. Is this standard of gluten free baking, am I doing something wrong, or is it just that brand of flour? :-\
I stopped using Bob's Red Mill after two gluten-free baking disasters. I really couldn't get over that gross taste in my bakery. Arrowhead Mills gluten-free flour tastes better, sweeter.
The gluten-free flour mix so far that's worked best for me is the one at the beginning of Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.
I live in Holland and I use an English brand called Dove's Farm. I don't know if it's available in the USA, but I highly recommend you ask around for it!
There are a lot of mixes you can make yourself, and store in the freezer that are vastly cheaper than the premade ones and taste far better with awesome baking results. It can take time to find one you love, or several if you are like me. But if you live GF, I think they are worth trying to find. Personally, I don't use the premade blends and have never tried most of them. I like these, they are pretty middle of the road average to many mix ratios out there, and none of the flours are too hard to find. If you want to use "healthier" flours, brown rice can be subbed for the white, I like it best up to 50/50 white to brown, otherwise the taste is funky to me.
oops, forgot to post the linkehttp://www.livingwithout.com/guides/food_allergy_substitutions.html
Thanks so much for the link!! PS. Where do you buy your flours??
I get most of my flours from a large grocery here in town. I try and avoid whole foods because they charge way too much. If you buy online, Bobs Red mill has most GF flouRS available all in one place, so there is less shipping. If you have an asian food market around, it may be worth a trip, even if it is a longer one. Tapioca starch, potato starch, soy flour, sweet rice flour and regular rice flour are way cheaper there, and the rice flour from the asian market is a super fine grind, which gives the best results. A GF professional baker told me that and it has made my GF baking much more sucessful.
There are a lot of mixes you can make yourself, and store in the freezer that are vastly cheaper than the premade ones and taste far better with awesome baking results. It can take time to find one you love, or several if you are like me. But if you live GF, I think they are worth trying to find. Personally, I don't use the premade blends and have never tried most of them. I like these, they are pretty middle of the road average to many mix ratios out there, and none of the flours are too hard to find. If you want to use "healthier" flours, brown rice can be subbed for the white, I like it best up to 50/50 white to brown, otherwise the taste is funky to me.
I get most of my flours from a large grocery here in town. I try and avoid whole foods because they charge way too much. If you buy online, Bobs Red mill has most GF flouRS available all in one place, so there is less shipping. If you have an asian food market around, it may be worth a trip, even if it is a longer one. Tapioca starch, potato starch, soy flour, sweet rice flour and regular rice flour are way cheaper there, and the rice flour from the asian market is a super fine grind, which gives the best results. A GF professional baker told me that and it has made my GF baking much more sucessful.
That's a good tip as I go shopping for gluten-free flours too. I found a box of sweet rice flour at an Asian market for 99 cents!
You can also make a GF flour blend from the recipe in Gluten-Free Gourmet books by Bette Hagman. I know a lot of people use her flour blend recipe with a lot of success.
I tend to buy the pre-made one I mentioned, because I don't bake much and have limited kitchen space to store any other kind. It is more expensive, but I've thrown out a lot of stuff in the past as it got old before I used it and that wasn't cheap for me, either.