How to bake with gluten-free flour! Learn about the different types of gluten-free flour blends, compare popular Canadian brands, and get tips on baking with gluten-free flour to get the best results.
Sadly there’s no one gluten-free grain or starch that can be used to replace wheat flour. To replace wheat flour in your baking, you need a combination of gluten-free grains, starches and a binder.
Fortunately, there’s several gluten-free flour blends on the market that do this work for you. They mix and measure the various gluten-free grains, starches and binders so you don’t have to.
A lot of these brands advertise that they can be used as a simple 1 to 1 swap with all-purpose wheat flour in your gluten-free baking, but like with so much of gluten-free baking, it’s not quite that simple.
These blends can be very helpful when it comes to gluten-free baking, especially when first starting out, but you have to know the right way to use them.
Pros
- Less ingredients to purchase and store.
- More efficient when baking, less ingredients to measure out.
- Less upfront costs, and can be less expensive if not doing a lot of gluten-free baking.
- The initial cost to buy all of the needed gluten-free grain flours, starches and binders individually can be a lot.
- If you’re not sure how much baking you’ll do, you may not use all the flours and starches up before their best before date.
Cons
- Ingredients vary from blend to blend; therefore, how they behave in various recipes varies from blend to blend.
- Some blends are expensive per gram, as compared to the cost per gram of buying all the ingredients individually.
- Less flexibility to tailor ratio of gluten-free grains, starches and binders to fit specific recipe.
Types of gluten-free flour blends
Not all gluten-free blends are the same. Ingredients can vary substantially between brands.
Rice flour blends
The first ingredient in these blends will be rice flour, or a combination of different types of rice flours (white rice flour, brown rice flour, sweet white rice flour). They should also include a starch, such as tapioca, potato or corn, or a combination of these starches, and a binder, such as xanthan gum. Some blends may also contain additional ingredients, often to add fibre or additional binders.
In Canada, common blends you’ll find in the grocery store that fall into this category include: Robin Hood All-Purpose Gluten Free Flour Blend, Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1 to 1 Baking Flour, Irresistible Gluten Free All-Purpose Flour (Metro store brand) and Cup 4 Cup Gluten Free Multipurpose Flour Blend. In the US, King Arthur Gluten-Free Measure for Measure Flour would also fall into this category.
I typically use rice flour blends in my baking. I find that compared to all-purpose wheat flour, they have the most similar taste and baking properties.
Tips for using rice flour blends
- Rice flour can sometimes leave a gritty texture in baked goods that have shorter bake times, such as cookies and muffins. If you're having this problem, let cookie dough chill for an hour and muffin batter rest for 30 minutes at room temperature before baking. This gives the flour more time to absorb moisture from the dough/batter and prevent grittiness.
- Cup 4 Cup includes milk powder in its blend, if you’re also dairy free, avoid this blend. This blend also has a slightly higher starch content than other blends in this category. If this is causing you problems, see my tips below for working with blends with higher starch contents.
High starch content blends
There are also blends that don’t include rice flour, and often use corn flour instead. These brands generally have a higher percentage of starches in them. In Canada, these include Compliments Gluten Free All-Purpose Flour Blend (Sobeys store brand) and President’s Choice Gluten Free All-Purpose Flour Blend (Loblaws store brand).
I find these types of flours can be particularly good for pastry, such as pie crusts, as their properties are slightly more similar to pastry flour.
Tips for using higher starch content blends
- Due to the higher starch content in these blends, recipes using these blends generally require additional liquid. In my recipes I try to note how much additional liquid to use if using this type of flour blend.
- The higher starch content can sometimes cause a gummy texture in finished baked goods. To avoid this, you may need to slightly increase the baking time (due to the extra liquid) and make sure to let items cool completely before slicing/serving. Starches and gums need to fully cool to set to avoid gumminess. Reheat if you want to serve warm.
- If you don’t want to use a blend that contains rice flour, I recommend these types of blends.
Other blends
There are also blends that use different flours such as garbanzo bean flour and other bean flours. Personally, I don’t generally use these types of blends as I don’t like the distinctive taste that bean flours can have.
You can also find blends that use grain flours that have a slightly stronger, earthy flavour, such as teff flour or buckwheat flour. These grain flours are often used in blends that are trying to mimic whole wheat flour. It can be worth exploring these types of grain flours in your baking, but for best results, use recipes tailored to these types of flours and not in recipes where you’re trying to replace all-purpose wheat flour.
Best practices
Gluten-free flour blends can be very useful, but they have to be used in the right way.
Know your gluten-free flour blend
Start by reading the blend’s list of ingredients. By understandings what makes up the blend, you'll have a better understanding of how it will perform in your recipe. If you have dietary restrictions in addition to gluten, make sure you read the label carefully, as some brands contain other common allergens, such as dairy.
Measure correctly
If measuring using measuring cups, use the spoonful method. Spoon the flour into your measuring cup until the flour is mounded over the rim, but don’t pack it down, and then scrape of the excess using the back of a knife. This method is more accurate than the dip and sweep method, which compacts the fine grains and starches in gluten-free flour blends, and causes you to over measure.
Use recipes designed to be gluten free
A brand may promote itself as being a 1 to 1 replacement for all-purpose wheat flour, but that is unlikely to provide you with the best results. Even when using gluten-free flour blends, gluten-free baking still generally requires a different ratio of ingredients as compared to wheat flour recipes. Gluten-free baking usually requires a higher ratio of liquids to dry ingredients. Gluten-free baked goods also often benefit from additional leaveners, adjusted amounts of butter and oil, and additional ingredients that can add richness, moisture and/or structure, such as sour cream, yogurt or almond flour. Therefore, it’s really important to use recipes designed to be gluten free, such as the recipes on this site.
Testing popular brands - 1 to 1 swap
As an experiment, I made chocolate chip cookies, blueberry muffins and a pie crust, replacing the all-purpose wheat flour with gluten-free flour on a 1 to 1 basis. I did this using six different popular gluten-free flour blends. Different blends provided varying results, but none came close to the results you can achieve when using a specifically designed gluten-free recipe. In addition to taste and texture issues that varied by blend, pretty much all of the bakes were too dry, highlighting the need for extra liquid/moisture in gluten-free baking.
Chocolate chip cookie test
Here is a picture of the chocolate chip cookies. You can see that all of them look dry and some also didn’t spread properly. My taste testers also noted that they tasted too dry, some being too gritty and some having a weird mouth feel (too starchy).
You can make great cookies using any of the above brands, but you need the right recipe. If you want a good recipe for gluten-free chocolate chip cookies, try my chocolate chip cookies!
Blueberry muffin test
Here is a picture of the blueberry muffins. As compared to chocolate chip cookies or pie crust, the muffins naturally have a lower percentage of flour as compared to total ingredients. Recipes with a lower flour content generally have better results when replacing the wheat flour on a 1 to 1 basis. In this case, the muffins actually looked pretty good, but don’t let the pictures fool you. My taste testers still found them too dry, and noted texture issues.
If you want a good recipe for gluten-free blueberry muffin, try my blueberry muffins!
Pie crust test
Here is an example picture from my pie crust test. The top picture is a pie crust made using a standard pie crust recipe, swaping the all-purpose flour with the gluten-free blend on a 1 to 1 basis. You can tell how dry the crust is from all the cracks. Below it is a picture of a pie crust using the same gluten-free flour blend as above, but using my gluten-free pie crust recipe. The difference is clear!
Gluten-free flour blends can be a great help in the kitchen. I use them all the time and use them in a lot of my recipes on this site. But you have to use them correctly to get the best results. I hope these tips help you to get the most out of your gluten-free flour blends.
Let me know in the comments section down below what's your favourite brand to use. If there are certain brands not discussed above that you want me to try, please let me know that too.
Happy gluten-free baking!
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