I have heard that many people who
are gluten intolerant have given up trying to make their old favorite baked
goods. They want to have the same taste
they remember, but stay within their gluten restrictions. Based upon my own experiences, I can tell you,
this can be tough. I have experimented
with many different flours, and I have come up with some very mixed
results. Some of the flours have such
strong tastes that the baked good ends up only tasting like the flour, nothing
more.
This
last holiday season I found three flours that worked really well. They gave me a good finished product without
the gritty texture that you get from some gluten free flours. The three flours I used were oat, coconut,
and almond. The oat and almond flours
were used for the body of the baked good as with regular flour, while the
coconut was used for both body and flavor.
These
flours can be found in bulk bins and in packages. The bulk bins of these flours are at Outpost
Natural Foods and Whole Foods. I,
personally, started with the bulk bins, getting only the amount needed for a
recipe. Doing it this way, I was able to
find out how the flours worked for a given recipe without having a lot left
over. Now I have the confidence to buy
these flours in larger prepackaged amounts.
These prepacked flours can be found at Woodman’s, along with many others,
as Woodman’s has a great assortment of gluten free flours.
One
thing I do have to say about using these flours, is that if I weighed the flour
instead of using measuring cups, I came out with a better outcome. To help me with this, I found a great cup to
weight conversion chart on the King Arthur Flour website. Visit www.kingarthurflour.com/learn/ingredient-weight-chart.html
if you have a scale, otherwise keep using your cup measures.
I
hope that with these gluten-free flours you will try baking again.
