- Find a favourite gluten free flour/meal as your key flour - one that you love the texture and taste of - and use it as your base. For us it’s almond flour!! We use it pretty much EVERY TIME, except for traditional bread.
- Focus on quality - we use premium quality gluten free flours at home and in our gluten free baking mixes. It’s an investment that always returns.
- Diversify, diversify, diversify - minimum 3 “flours” for a recipe - MINIMUM. With only a few exceptions, more diversity is more. This is mostly about achieving amazing gluten free texture, but it often helps the taste too.
- Don’t get seduced by new to market flours, grains or meals - buy a small amount, try them and quickly decide whether they are worth further experimentation based on flavour and texture. Some flours just suck, so don’t waste your time trying to make it work if you’re not feeling it. If you would like some further thoughts on this, please see my related post – Four gluten free flours that are dead to me.
- Be conservative with the amount of binder/gluten-replacer you use when you make a recipe for the first time. The only thing worse than a gluten free baked good being crumbly is when it’s slimy, gummy or has an aftertaste from one of the additives. Our preferred binders are gluten free golden flaxseed flour and gluten free psyllium husk powder. We prefer a wholefood approach and therefore avoid xanthan and other gums. A high-quality psyllium husk powder can be used as a 1-to-1 replacement for xanthan gum in most recipes.
- Last but not least, weigh your ingredients! We all know that baking requires more precision that cooking, and for gluten free baking it’s even more important because small changes can dramatically impact texture. Alarmingly, the variability between measuring cup volume is seriously high. For example, a quarter cup can be anywhere between 50ml and 73ml rather than the 62.5ml that it should be. We always put volumes and weights on our baking mixes because we want to give you the option and our gluten free baking mixes are relatively forgiving. However, if you have a scale, please use it. And if you’re making gluten free bread, it is absolutely essential that you weigh your flours and water - an extra 15ml of water can be the difference between the perfect loaf and a gargantuan hole in the middle of your bread.
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