Gluten-free All-Purpose Flour Blend

Hi, y’all! I am really willing to bet that if you’re seeing this it’s because you put the feed in your reader. Anyhoo, long-dormant apologetic blog posts are all the rage in the post-Twitter age. So, I’ll assume you’ve read it before. On to the content.

I’ve been futzing with gluten-free flour blends because I’m not usually in the mood to measure out 3-5 different flours when I’m trying to make pancakes on a weekend morning, so over the pas year, I’ve finally settled upon one.

I just recently got a kitchen scale, and in just a few weeks, I’ve found it truly helps with making the base flour mix far more consistent when the weight remains the same across batches, instead of by volume. To be fair, I still measure things like pancakes etc cetera by volume mostly because I haven’t gotten around to conversions yet. What does that make me? Lazy! Inconsistent!

What I like about this one is that it’s still pretty light and it makes a nice consistency, fairly similar to regular all-purpose flour. It’s about 2/3 whole grain flours and 1/3 starch to keep it from being too dense, but has a whole-grainy nutty flavor. I have to say. however, it does have a taste, I think especially if you are not used to eating gluten-free flours. It’s not a flavor-neutral flour, but I rather love it. I substitute it 1:1 for regular flour in non-gluten free recipes. If you use xanthan gum, you will need to add it to your recipes to bind the baked good together.

For those of you who don’t have a scale, I usually use a single measuring cup and make this in volume ratios. For the amounts I’m listing below, I used the 1/3 cup. And, as always, make sure your flours are gluten free. (I use Bob’s Red Mill for the brown rice, sorghum, and tapioca flours. I use the Arrowhead Mills millet flour. Mostly Arrowhead Mills is a little less expensive, but I find their brown rice flour is SUUUPER gritty, and can’t usually find their tapioca or sorghum in-stock.

Heather’s sorta fussy gluten-free flour mix
(Makes about 8 1/3 cups of flour)

Volume ratios:
4 parts sorghum flour
4 parts millet flour
8 parts brown rice flour
9 parts tapioca starch

Weight:
135g sorghum flour
175g millet flour
350g brown rice flour
350g tapioca starch

Mix the flours in a large bowl with a whisk and store in a dry, cool place. (I use my 1 gallon glass jar because it makes me happy. I store my rice in a jar like this too — just like my mom! — and have never had a problem with moisture).

Crackly, crunchy French bread

MAN.  This bread.  Seriously.  I made it flawlessly 3 times, making it a little more my own each time.

Then, I bought a French bread pan, so I could stop making rigged French bread pans with tin foil.  THEN, I accidentally filled my white rice flour container with sweet rice flour.  Then it was fail after gooey French bread fail.

I wasn’t sure if it was the pan, making the baking needs different, the starchier sweet rice flour, too much xanthan gum or the devil making it gummy, but gummy it was.  So I decided to tweak all of it.  Including kicking the devil out of my oven.

And I think I got it now.

Garam Masala and Ginger Cupcakes

I had such high hopes for these little cupcakes. But a few things happened:

1. There wasn’t enough ginger
2. I tried making them with canola oil for lightness instead of butter
3. The cream cheese icing elicited a gluten-like reaction… All Kraft products seem to do that here. 

So until these are all worked out, I must remain happy that at least I got pictures on my fancy new plates!

Making gluten-free pizza

The first time I ever made a gluten-free pizza crust, the mini-series that preceded the show The Starter Wife was on, and we were watching it idly.  It annoyed me.  The commercials for the series that followed drove me up the wall and significantly dampered my appreciation for Psych and Burn Notice. 

The pizza crust was a mix from ‘Cause You’re Special, that was extremely delicious.  And so sticky, that after trying to spread it around the pan for an hour and literally yelling at it with rage and frustration that the Pants – for the first and ONLY time – took over making the pizza crust.  With the grace of waxed paper, olive oil and a wooden spoon, he got it all arranged in the pan, we had pizza and holy cow was it delicious.

I do wonder from time to time whether it was this freaking crust incident that made me have such disdain and annoyance for The Starter Wife, but then I realized that no, it was just that bad of a show.  So it was cancelled, and I found a pizza crust recipe from scratch that I love and have tweaked it to my liking.  All’s right with the world.

Summertime means blueberry pie

Oh my.  Oh my my.  Now I have to find a way to say this is blueberry pie without rhyming.  That mostly worked.

I love making blueberry pies.  Although I think they’re delicious, they’re not my favorite of the bunch (that would be lemon meringue, but all things considered? I’m more of a cake girl than a pie girl*).  Although I do love them and they say summer to me.  This summer has been odd, however. Not nearly as hot and humid as summers usually are, and very rainy. Although I have a difficult time complaining about lack of humidity and heat. Especially since it’s SO much easier to make a pie crust in this kind of weather.

Tuna Macaroni Summer Salad

My mom made this for us every summer for a cold lunch, dinner, snack that wouldn’t overheat the kitchen and would keep for days.  It’s the sort of thing that is a typical 1970’s magazine recipe laden with cheese and mayonnaise and canned tuna (quelle horreur!) but that I want to eat every summer.