How I made gluten-free flour

I’m not a very good cook. I can make simple things like pancakes, casseroles, and soups but ask me to do anything more complicated and you’re asking for trouble. When we decided to go gluten free, I was more than a little nervous about my ability to actually create GF versions of our favorite gluten-filled foods. I was thankful for the plethora of GF options available at the grocery store (and we do not live in a large city so this says a lot about how much the GF movement has touched mainstream America) but most are much more expensive than their gluten-filled counterparts. Our grocery bill started to add up — fast.

I quickly realized that, if we were going to continue along the GF path, I’d have to learn to homemake many staples. It was a daunting thought but, good or bad, that’s just the kind of challenge that tends to spur me into action.

One of the first foods I mastered was good, old-fashioned GF flour. Flour is in almost everything and I was going to need a GF alternative if I was going to keep my four year olds bellies’ filled with delicious snacks. Thanks to Denise Jardine and her book, The Dairy-Free and Gluten-Free Kitchen, I had a simple and easy-to-follow guide for preparing all-purpose GF flour.

But first, let me let you in on a little secret: I was more than a little overwhelmed just by looking at the ingredient list. I’d never heard of most of the ingredients and I had no clue where to get them. I felt like giving up right then and there but, like I said earlier, I do kinda like a challenge.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that most of these ingredients could be found right in my local Kroger, and most of them were right next to the organic foods that I usually purchased for my family. I’d been looking at these items for years and had just never noticed.

There was one needed ingredient that I was unable to find on my first trip to Kroger and even our local health food store was out. I couldn’t locate either sorghum or garbanzo bean flour. I’m new to this so there may be an easy work-around to this problem but I’m not well-versed enough in the nuances of GF cooking to know what it is. I sat in my kitchen staring at my newly-acquired bags of brown rice flour, potato starch, and tapioca flour, as if I could will a bag of garbanzo bean flour to appear in their midst. I think I stood there for a good seven minutes, the sound of Dora the Explorer singing in my ears from the adjacent family room.

Eventually (or seven minutes later), I realized that I was able to will some garbanzo bean flour into existence. I’d never used my Vitamix (which is an incredible machine, by the way, and everyone should have one) to make flour but I remembered that I could. I also just happened to have a bag of dried garbanzo beans in the cupboard. Voila! I poured a couple of cups of dried garbanzo beans in the pitcher, turned the Vitamix dial, and, in less than two minutes, I had freshly ground garbanzo bean flour. It was like magic. Vitamix magic.

Once I had all the ingredients, putting the flour together was super easy. I took just a few minutes to mix it all together. I doubled the recipe, bagged it in a gallon-sized ziplock bag, and stuck in the refrigerator for safe-keeping. Next time I may even try to make my own rice flour.

Here’s how you, too, can make all-purpose GF flour, courtesy of Denise Jardine and her book, The Dairy-Free and Gluten-Free Kitchen. Have fun!

Ingredients:
1¼ cups brown or white rice flour
¾ cup potato starch (do not use potato flour)
½ cup tapioca flour or arrowroot flour
½ cup sorghum flour or garbanzo bean flour

Directions:
Combine the rice flour, potato starch, tapioca flour, and sorghum flour in a large bowl. Mix together with a whisk until thoroughly combined. Transfer the flour mixture to an airtight container and refrigerate until ready to use. This gluten-free flour mix will keep for 4 months in the refrigerator.