Taking Back Baking: Flour That Won't Kill You

Ah, flour... or, in Celiac terms, the root of all evil.  All-purpose flour and its fancier cousins are the forefront of the gluten menace, and holy toast are they ever in everything.

The good news is, there are substitutes.  Good substitutes.  Yes, that does mean you'll have to substitute it yourself, but if you're complaining about making your own food AND you've been gluten intolerant for more than five minutes, you clearly don't want those gluten-free cookies badly enough.  Get your lazy arse off my blog, and don't come back until you've sorted out your priorities.

For the rest of you, here's my go-to all-purpose flour recipe:

-3 cups rice flour (I use brown rice flour, because it's all healthy and stuff)
-1 cup potato starch
-1/2 cup tapioca starch
-A pinch of xanthan gum, if you're feeling frisky (Fun Fact: xanthan gum helps your food stick together, since gluten isn't around to do it.  It's not always necessary, though--especially if you're using eggs--so I usually leave it out of the flour mix and just add it to recipes that need the extra bit o' binding)

If you want a smaller or bigger batch, that's where logic comes in.  Just stick with the proportions--in other words, 6 parts rice flour to 2 parts potato starch to 1 part tapioca starch.  Plus maybe some xanthan gum, for friskiness.

Now, this is where you can afford to be kind of lazy-- if buying a bunch of different flours and mixing them yourself isn't cheap and easy enough for you, Gluten Free Pantry's All-Purpose Flour is made of the same blend of flours, in similar enough proportions that it works just the same.

There are also plenty of good mixes available for more specific baking, but for replacing glutinous all-purpose flour in most recipes, this blend is the tops.  Go buy a box or whip some up yourself, then dig up your grandma's most Celiac-unfriendly muffin recipe and try it out.  In roughly 20-22 minutes (not including prep-time, of course) you'll be frolicking in baked success.  And muffins.  Tasty, tasty muffins.