Help Knowing What Flours to Use

I have an allergy free cookbook (wheat, dairy, egg, peanut, soy, etc…) in which the author uses 1/2 oat flour and 1/2 barley flour in most of her baked good recipes.  It is a little gritty but maybe not as much as brown rice (I haven’t tried brown rice flour).  It does hold up well when making muffins, biscuits or zucchini bread plus it doesn’t need the xanthum gum.  It is less expensive (since I grind both flours myself, buying the oats in bulk and the pearled barley packages by the dried beans in the grocery store).  The recipes use honey instead of sugar, egg replacer instead of eggs, and rice or oat milk instead of dairy.   Not sure how this flour combo would hold up in a recipe that uses sugar and eggs.  

HTH.

This is our all purpose GF flour mixture:

4 c. brown rice flour (I mill my own but you can buy store bought)

1. almond flour

1 c. sorghum flour (if you don’t have this just add another cup of rice flour)

2 c. potato starch

1 c. tapioca starch

1 heaping T. of xanthan gum

I realize that they have a couple of ingredients you didn’t want to use but it’s what I have found works for us (except in yeast breads).  I couldn’t find an alternative that worked for us.  

You can use only almond flour.  But that is very expensive.  The above works well for us.  We also, have really cut down on the amount of starches we eat because of cost.  I rarely use more than 2 cups a week.  Hope this helps.

Here is what I have found with flours:

coconut flour – NEEDS a lot of eggs or egg replacer for binding

oat flour – can result in a very dry type end product as it doesn’t can absorb a lot of moisture. It needs extra liquid (when you cook oatmeal it’s 2:1 water:oats) at the very least, though soaked oat flour doesn’t have as much problem as fresh oat flour and it’s better for the body to boot.

sorghum flour – our current favorite – cooks up nicely and has a good flavor that our family likes.  We do mix this with arrowroot or tapioca starch/ flour.  we haven’t been adding xanthan gum to this either, and it’s still working out pretty well.  we make cakes, tortillas, etc. that have turned out perfectly.

quinoa – not as dry a flour as oat or buckwheat but *must* have guar gum or xanthan gum to hold it together though we have also used amaranth as well since it binds VERY nicely

amaranth – this is very good mixed in with other flours to hold things together as it’s very sticky.  I have used this successfully in place of sticky rice in flours as it has similar properties.

millet – to me, this is somewhere between sorghum and quinoa. 

buckwheat – nutty/ earthy flavor and kind of a dry flour. does best with other flours mixed in, but we have made a few things with only buckwheat… I think pancakes were one thing as well as a cookie type baked good.  It’s been a while since we’ve done this, though. 

rice flour – unless finely ground, this is a very grainy product.  it will take a lot of liquid as well because, well, it’s rice. (2:1 ratio again).  this can make a nice baked good, but it’s best if it is mixed with at couple of other flours (sticky rice or amaranth as well as xanthan gum) since it’s a rather dry flour.

I won’t use barley because I’ve been told that it still has properties that are similar to the gluten in wheat.  If your doctor doesn’t have a problem with it, try it.  Look at the properties of the flours and try mixing them.  In the end, the cost really comes in when you have to mix enough flours together to get a decent end product. 

I don’t know if this is helpful, but don’t despair.  You *will* get the hang of this, there’s just a learning curve.

Mrs. K, soak 1 c oat to 2 c warm-ish water and add 1 T of whey or lemon juice.  Cover and soak overnight.  To cook, place 2 cups of water into a pot and a dash of salt (optional). Bring to a boil.  Add the soaked oats and cook until thinkened – about 3 minutes or so.  You will need to stir this if not constantly then often as the mixture will bubble up some.  This can be lessened by turning the heat down to medium, but it will still occur.

I need to wrap things up on the net for this evening, but if you want you can do an search for soaked flour recipes.  At least one of the recipes that I have is printed off of here.  I will get back to you later with the actual recipe.