best non-wheat flour?

[Amatullah0]

I would really like to go wheat free, but we eat a lot of bread. I really think it will be impossible for us to go wheat-free without a good substitute for bread flour. We've tried rice flour in the form of AMY's frozen pizzas, but the crust was way too grainy for our liking.

I don't want to spend a fortune on trying out flours, so if you bake, please, let me know what you use in place of white flour for breads, tortillas/flatbread, pie crusts, cakes/cookies.

I'd be open to suggestions about mixing flours + other ingredients to get a good flour.


sorry, ds was helping to type!

[Multimomma]

we use the mixes in Wheat free Recipes and Menus, by Carol Fenster. We've been GF for six years now, and the brown rice one is my favorite. Brown rice flour, with tapioca and potato. It has a good texture and flavor, although nothing really rises like wheat

[Amatullah0]

Thanks, I'll see if I can find that book in our library!

[mum4vr]

Not to throw a monkey wrench in, but brown rice flour is our least favorite. We didn't mix it with tapioca and potato tho. It feels gritty to me. I do like the nutty sweet flavor of brown rice, but not the texture of the flour.

Our non-wheat standby is barley. It bakes up light in color texture and flavor, mild and sweet. It cannot be used for yeast breads, only quick breads, pancakes, cookies, cake, etc. It does ok w angel biscuits tho-- and they use both bkg powder and yeast.

If it's wheat you're avoiding and not gluten, other flours with gluten make nice yeast breads-- like rye, etc. Just check the gluten content vs what you need.

We also use a lot of corn flour (not meal-- flour) it is so fine, it makes corn breads without added wheat flour (ie, I follow the corn bread recipe, but use corn flour for both the corn meal and the wheat flour), and the texture is light as cake-- the children love it.

blessings

[Amatullah0]

ok, so is the gluten what makes the yeast "work"? as in, theoretically, I could add a certain amount of gluten to any flour to make it good in yeast breads? I'd really like something that is almost exactly the same as white flour in breads, at least in the lightness of it.

I think we are only avoiding wheat right now. I think we have some wheat intolerance going on, and I'd like to see what(if anything) changes once we get wheat out of our diet for a while. funny thing is though, I said we were going to do this about a week ago, and we've been eating more wheat that I can ever remember. though, maybe i'm jsut more aware of it now,

[Koalamom]

What about spelt?

[Multimomma]

If I was going to trial a food for sensitivities, I would want to make sure that I covered all of my bases. I would really suggest going gluten free for a few weeks, and then add back in the alternative flours. It would be a big waste of time to just take out wheat flour for weeks, and not see a difference, then try the others. However, i am coming at this from an allergy point of view, and not just it making you uncomfortable, as that could be from food balancing or any other number of issues (at which point it's not the chemical makeup of the food, but rather the ratio)

[fruitfulmomma]

This is a good chart for replacing wheat flour...
http://www.bobsredmill.com/docs/pdf/...ive_Flours.pdf

If you do not use a gluten-containing flour you do need to add some other ingredients, like guar or zantham gums.

We use a lot of rice flour as a thickener in soups, gravies, etc... I think it works best of all the ones we've tried. You could also do corn starch, but we can't do corn here. I tried tapioca and it turned mucousy.

www.kathysrecipebox.com is run by a mom on here and has some great ideas.

The ingredients for the best pizza crust we've tasted are...
"Water, Tapioca Flour, Sorghum Flour, Rice Flour, Flax Seeds,
Potato Starch, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Yeast, Salt,
Xanthan Gum, Trace Amounts of Soy" That is from a local restaurant chain (http://www.beaujos.com/menu.html) and I think they buy them premade, so I don't have a recipe, but just to give you an idea of what you might use.

And I agree with Multimomma, I would take out all gluten and see how that goes and then slowly add the other wheat-free, gluten-containing flours (rye, barley, spelt, triticale) back in. You'll have a better idea then if it is going to make a difference for you.

[cristeen]

A couple problems i see with what you're proposing, beyond what the pps have said:
1 - you cant add gluten and avoid wheat. The gluten that is sold by itself is made from wheat. You would need to use another gluten containing grain/flour completely.

2 - no non-wheat grain acts just like wheat. None of them will give you something indiscernible from wheat bread. There are a few ancient strains of wheat that are often recommended to people who are sensitive, but technically its still wheat, and its only sometimes tolerated by people w a wheat problem.

Usually my recommendation is to cut out all grains for 3 weeks to get it all out of your system. Then start adding things back in one at a time. This really helps pinpoint where the problem really is.

[Amatullah0]

Originally Posted by cristeen

A couple problems i see with what you're proposing, beyond what the pps have said:
1 - you cant add gluten and avoid wheat. The gluten that is sold by itself is made from wheat. You would need to use another gluten containing grain/flour completely.
Thanks, I was trying to figure out if gluten has to be from wheat, I knew that gluten could come from wheat, but I didn't know if there were different sources of it, or something(kinda like how gelatin can be from plant or animal sources)
2 - no non-wheat grain acts just like wheat. None of them will give you something indiscernible from wheat bread. There are a few ancient strains of wheat that are often recommended to people who are sensitive, but technically its still wheat, and its only sometimes tolerated by people w a wheat problem.
I realize that too, I am only looking for something that is as close to wheat, well white wheat flour, as I can get. I know that nothing will be exactly the same as white flour.
Usually my recommendation is to cut out all grains for 3 weeks to get it all out of your system. Then start adding things back in one at a time. This really helps pinpoint where the problem really is. I might try this. The only problem with this is, I feel like we eat grains almost constantly, as in, "what would we eat if we didn't eat grains?" We eat mostly indo-pak food, and that means using bread or rice to eat it with. I don't really have any desire to eat that type of food without bread or rice. So maybe my solution is to cook different types of foods, like chicken breasts or eggplant or kabob, stir fries, and lentils. Hmmm, that sounds very doable now that i'm listing out options, especially if we write a 3 week meal plan.

I find that a lot of the snacks that I feed DS are from flour. I'd like to avoid giving him too much fruit, and he can't eat things like raw carrots or celery yet. Currently, I give him crackers or biscuits

[Multimomma]

There are a several GF cereals and crackers, many of them can even be found in just a typical grocery store...outside of the Chex brand things, even our walmart has the amazon Gorilla Munch (which is a great toddler food)

We do a lot of veggies, just diced. I'll pour a cup of boiling water over them for a minute, drain and let them cool, and it's pretty easy to chew. You might also look into the Just Fruits, they're easy to chew, and you can get veggie, not just fruit.

It can seem overwhelming at first, but there really are great options for eating GF.