Homemade Gluten-Free Flour Guide

The other day I had cornbread on my mind. Let's go ahead and blame it on Mike since he was making his infamous taco chili soup. Wait, now that I type that...is that redundant? Does chili imply that it's a sort of stew or soup of it's own? Hmmm. Anyways, what goes better with chili than cornbread? Nothing. You're right, per usual. Y'all are good!

So off I went to the google machine to peruse cornbread recipes so I could make one of my own. There were a few good ideas out there, but all of them had one or two ingredients that I didn't currently have in the house, and I'm just not one to run to the store for one ingredient.

That's where my guessing and hoping for the best comes in. That's also where all of my "you probably don't want to taste that" recipes come from...but no risk, no reward, right? Good news is this one was a reward. Bad news is I didn't whip out the camera because I was in a rush to make it before the taco chili was done...Mike bet I couldn't do it in time and I'm kinda competitive. Situations like this cloud my judgement I think.

The ingredients that I didn't have was a gluten-free flour blend, which is what most of the recipes for gluten-free cornbread called for. With a little bit more googling, I now can make a gluten-free flour blend for anything!

Found this picture while googling since I had none of my own - and also found lots of interesting info! It's the Flour Advisory Bureau ...who knew there was one of those?

Here's how easy it is to make your own:

All you need a 40/60 ratio of whole grain to starches/white flours.
That means 40% whole grains, 60% starches/white flours. Your options for each are as follows:

Whole Grains:

- Teff Flour

- Sweet Potato Flour

- Sorghum Flour

- Quinoa Flour

- Millet Flour

- Oat Flour

- Mesquite Flour

- Corn Flour

- Buckwheat Flour

- Brown Rice Flour

Starches/White Flours:
- White Rice Flour
- Tapioca Flour
- Sweet Rice Flour
- Potato Starch
- Cornstarch
- Arrowroot Flour

*Assume that there are 140 grams in 1 cup of all purpose baking flour. That means you need 56g of whole grains, and 84g of starches/white flours. A scale helps. I use this scale which I bought on Amazon.

And then mix the two that you choose together and there you have it! Use this as your general guide to a gluten-free flour base and you should be good to go. Some mixtures will respond differently due to water absorption, but I haven't tried them all yet, so play around and find what you like best.

That being said if a recipe specifically says something along the lines of "make sure to use these", or "do not substitute", I would heed those suggestions because they have probably done their homework and know a thing or two about baking.

Now get to replacin'!!