Start with flour

Aurelia Brogan
Jun 6, 2020
5 min read

A utilitarian post to get us started.

Originally, I was going to post about dough, (which I will at a later date), but flour has been on my mind. Flour has been hard to come by for some of us these past couple crazy weeks, and without flour we can’t bake. A couple weeks ago I placed an online order for some flour from Bobs Red Mill. Even 2 weeks ago, they were sold out of regular flour online, but luckily I’m gluten free and used to making things without traditional white flours. I now have a few different flours to work with in the upcoming weeks. You may see random flours in the store and wonder what you can do with them and if you should buy them, or how to substitute some of the flours you already have with others. I hope this will help you navigate that question a bit, and provide you with a few recipes to try.

Our family is tackling school and work from home this week as many of you are too. While we are still ordering food in and trying to support local restaurants, we are obviously also eating and cooking from home way more. If you are anything like our family, you are all working around one another in some form or another and could use time away from screens. Many of you are finding yourselves or family members in the kitchen baking, either for fun, out of boredom, or by necessity. Even though flour is currently a bit hard to find because of Coronavirus shortages/demand in stores, hopefully you have some on hand. If we can all make more food at home in the upcoming weeks, we will be doing our part to follow “stay at home” orders.

I hope you have enough flour to get in the kitchen and do some baking with me….because with just a few ingredients – even just flour and water we can make a bite to eat. Hopefully you will post your experiments- fails or triumphs, ideas for people at home, and your delicious “bakes”.

A NOTE ON GLUTEN FREE BAKING/COOKING: As I mentioned I bake gluten free for myself, but also gluten-full for my family so I’ll sometimes post versions of recipes and ideas for substituting flours as much as possible. Make sure when you are buying your flours if you have a gluten sensitivity or allergy you check and make sure it is identified as “GLUTEN FREE”, so you do not risk cross-contamination. Luckily our stores are getting so many great GF options and the prices are coming down a bit as well, because they can be much more expensive. Also, each recipe and flour reacts differently so I find it is very difficult to have overall “rules” for baking and conversions but I’ll do my best to give you information I discover.

OAT FLOUR: GF! My favorite flour to work with is Oat Flour. I think it works great as a main substitute for regular flour for many gluten free cookies, breads and other baked goods…and it’s good for you. Bob’s Red Mill brand is my favorite brand, and the easiest for me to find here in SoCal stores. Where I live, Sprouts, Whole Foods and even Vons have options. Trader Joe’s brands sells great gluten free oats. I’ve seen their gluten free flour too, but have not tried it yet. You can even make your own from just oats.

CORN FLOUR: GF! Without many flours in stock, I bought corn flour and have been experimenting with it all week. This morning we made corn flour pancakes which were much like a delicious light cornbread. I’ll post recipe later.

GLUTEN FREE FLOUR: GF! My go-to brand for gluten free is King Arthur.

King Arthur Gluten Free Measure for Measure

MASA FLOUR: GF & New to me! I bought this flour a couple months ago to experiment with and found how easy and delicious it is to make our own corn tortillas. It’s definitely adds a few dinner steps and a bit more time, but totally doable, especially lately, and much more tasty than store-bought. It’ll be hard to go back to prepackaged corn tortillas. Follow the recipe on the back of the package and you can’t go wrong (2 cups flour, 1 1/2 cup water)–doesn’t get much easier! One bag lasts a long time, and you don’t need fancy equipment- a rolling pin works fine.

00 Flour: We use a little in our pizza dough recipe–my husband swears it makes all the difference. This super fine flour also used for making pasta.

“00” Flour-we find it in our Italian Market

RICE FLOUR: GF! Not a standard one for me, because I’m not a huge fan, but I’ll be experimenting with it more and letting you know what I find out. I think it’ll produce a light texture, particularly when blended with other flours. I know it’s good for coating and gluten free frying. A great option for gluten freeers!

White and Brown Rice Flour

CAKE FLOUR AND PASTRY FLOUR: If you are not much of a baker you may not have these on hand, but I usually do keep some in my pantry around birthdays and holidays when I know I’m going to be baking for company. Many of these flours have recipes on the back of the package which I have tried with much success, or you may have an old family recipe using these flours. While I’m not the best decorator of pastries and cakes, I do make a delicious cake and cake flour makes all the difference in certain recipes. Pastry flour has more delicate texture and is lower in protein than all-purpose flour.

WHITE OR WHEAT ALL PURPOSE FLOUR: The most common and basic for all to have. We may not be able to find our favorite brands at the store, or if you are like us we can’t find any regular All Purpose flour right now. But in normal times my preference is King Arthur Organic Unbleached white and wheat. Wheat flour is dryer, and more grainy. For all flours we buy organic whenever we can. Many companies add chemicals to whiten the flour…who needs it?! I don’t want to eat bleach thank you very much.

Brioche Breads –recipe coming soon

BREAD FLOUR: Good for pizzas and of course breads and rolls. More high in protein which means that bread flour has more gluten, making the dough more elastic.

ALMOND FLOUR: (Different from almond meal) A must have for gluten free baking and for a variety of cookies like macarons and cakes. I have a lovely Italian almond cornmeal lemon cake recipe I’ll share with you soon. Has a higher fat and protein content since it is basically ground almonds.

Italian almond cornmeal lemon cake

OTHER FLOURS: There are so many other flours out there. Some others I have in my pantry currently are rye, buckwheat, and coconut. I buy these in smaller amounts so that I use then up before the expiration date. Rye is great for breads. Coconut flour is good in baking some cases, but I find the coconut taste can overpower some recipes. (Also it cannot serve as a 1-1 replacement because of the fat content, and works well in small doses.) There are many more…chick pea flour, chestnut flour….and list goes on. We sometimes use semonina flour also, for pasta. I’m sure you have your favorites for various recipes-feel free to share.