Flour mix!

In the past I have always mixed some of this and some of that when I am making something from scratch.   The flours have included Tapioca  (light, fluffy), Brown Rice (nutritious, but still a bit of emptiness), Sorghum and Teff (nutritious and nutritious).  It has always worked well, except for banana bread which I have not been able to make well from scratch as a gluten free cook.  I can do it with mixes, but I hate buying mixes for something that is essentially a way to use up left over-and soft- bananas.

Last Christmas Quirky received a gift card to Barnes & Nobles. I went off to buy a book by Ellie Krieger and came home instead with a cookbook, Gluten Free Artisan Bread. . .  . YUM!   I bought more bags of flour in order to mix up the flour blends needed for these recipes.  In the end, I always stuck with making the Peasant Bread recipe as I like the hard edges and dense inside.  Sure, I miss the fluffy french bread but it was always a special treat when I was growing up, and not a staple. Whole wheat bread was the staple in the house---which is funny now as a celiac/gluten free/soy free person :-)   Don't fret on the missed Ellie book. . . I did get it this summer :-)  

This year I also broke down and bought my first bag of a cup for cup flour blend. I loved the simplicity of it, but I didn't like the amount of corn starch in it, nor the dry milk (family member has lactose intolerance), not the lack of nutrients in it. I shouldn't be upset about the last, I mean, plain white gluten flour isn't all the nutritious either.  A lot of times, I just make up for this by adding milled chia to the baked goods. This works for cakes, pizza, but not so much for cookies.

A while ago I asked some celiac friends for their favorite gluten free 1:1 flour recipes from websites. I was given four.  They are (in no particular order):

http://www.livinghealthymom.com/gluten-free-flour/

http://www.glutenfreeandmore.com/resources/food-allergy-substitutions.html

https://glutenfreegirl.com/2012/07/how-to-make-a-gluten-free-all-purpose-flour-mix/

http://www.foodphilosopher.com/assets/docs/glutfree.cfm

I looked them over, and eliminated one off the bat. The other three, I printed out for my binder cookbook collection, and decided on one to make--The Gluten Free Girl recipe.  It was the easiest to view with types of flours put into categories and the amount of flour of each type.

I was wanting to make brownies and cookies as the Quirky freezer was bare.  I long ago went to freezing at least half of sugary treats so we wouldn't get in that mode after a hard workout where you just want food/sugar/energy NOW!  Not to mention that when we're in training mode for a race coming up none of this stuff is premade.

I made up a small batch of flour and cooked up the brownies. I loved how it worked with the recipe. (The recipe did the same thing as last time and took forever for it to cook in the middle. I remembered to write in the gluten free cookbook to use a 9x13 instead of 8x8 and maybe cook it longer if needed, but to go with the suggested time in a larger pan. I also left out the chocolate chips. Cocoa and melted chocolate chips in the recipe was strong enough on the chocolate front.)  Then I made up the a batch of cookies actually using the Cup 4 Cup recipe on their sack :-)  They turned out very well.

While I didn't take photos of any of the baked goods, I wanted to share the recipe and have it here in the future. Go to Gluten Free Girl's link above for all the flour options to use.

I don't like bean flours as I feel they leave an after taste. I don't use nut flours because I have a niece and nephew who are allergic, and why get great with a flour mix that could severely impact a loved one?

200 grams of Brown Rice Flour
175 grams of Sorghum Flour
25   grams of Teff Flour (It's not much, but Teff cooks up a lot differently than other whole grain flours, and I generally just use a little bit here and there for this reason)
300 grams of Tapioca Flour
300 grams of Potato Starch (I had this on hand for the artisan bread book recipes)

I mixed this up in a tall quart plastic container (like this) I purchased earlier this year at the kitchen supply store.  After I was done baking, I was able to use one of the former flour storage containers to store my read to use 1:1 flour blend in the refrigerator. I opened up a bit of space emptying the jars I had used to store the flours in the freezer and refrigerator.