Gluten Free Baking Tips

Baking with gluten-free flours is another matter – a bit more complicated. There are some good basic gluten-free flour mixes on the market (Bob’s Red Mill, Hodson Mills,).
In order to substitute gluten-free flours for the wheat flour, you will need to have a good mix or variety of flours, such as Bette Hagman’s flour mix or any premixed Gluten Free All Purpose Mixes. This would be a mix consisting of perhaps rice flour, tapioca flour, potato starch flour as a basic mix. Then you can expand on that depending on what type of item you are making.

Millet flour: can make breads lighter,
sorghum flour: can add a bit of sweetness,
amaranth: holds moisture – which is good for quick breads like date bread.
Bean flours: add protein.

You can purchase Rice flour at your local Oriental Food Market. Orenital Flour is much finer, which makes it better for recipes. It is also a lot cheaper.

When you bake (cookies, breads, cakes, etc...) you will always need to put Xanthan Gum. For baking, the gum is of used to replace gluten. It can be used to replace gluten in wheat flour but you’ve got to mix the gum in a right amount to form a proportionate flour blend.

There is kind of a general guide as follows:

For 1 cup of flour mix, xanthan gum addition would be approximately:
Scant 1 teaspoon in breads,
½ teaspoon for cakes,
¼ teaspoon for cookies
¾ teaspoon for muffins
2 teaspoon for pizza
(You have to play with it)

You can also add an extra egg to your mix, or ½ to 1 teaspoon of unflavored gelatin. Or even a small package of instant vanilla pudding mix to your recipe.

And “bake with a pencil”. Write down what ingredient and what quantity you used in that particular recipe conversion, and then after you will know if it is OK as is, or needs to be tweaked a bit yet.

There will be baked goods that fail - - it has happened to all of us! Don’t let those discourage you - - keep trying and you’ll become a Gluten Free Baker!