Happy Sunday!

Normally I don't post over the weekends since I'm usually working on content, but I'll be posting quite a few holiday cookie recipes in the upcoming days, so I wanted to do a quick little post on how I made my gluten-free all-purpose flour blend.

To be honest, I was never very interested in making gluten-free baked goods, unless I was making treats for my friends with Celiacs- it does not make desserts any healthier when it comes down to the nutritional index of it, or give you license to eat 10 more cookies than you normally would.

But I've had a multitude of autoimmune issues recently that my doctors are still trying to figure out, so I've been told to avoid many common allergens with my food. So in that vein, this holiday season, I said I would experiment with alternative ingredients while baking because I think a lot of you guys who are curious about it can explore and experiment on this journey with me.

Something that I found frustrating when trying to search all-purpose gluten-free blends was that many of them had chickpea/garbanzo bean flour or fava bean flour in them, and right now I am to avoid legumes- always double check your labels!

I will be experimenting with other gluten-free blends as well, but this one worked out really well in all the cookie recipes I've made- I have not yet tried these in breads or cakes. I shared these cookies with huge groups of people, and everyone was raving about the cookies and no one had any idea they were gluten-free.

*The general rule of thumb to make gluten-free all purpose flour blends is to do 40% grain flours (brown rice flour, buckwheat flour, millet flour, oat flour, sorghum flour, quinoa flour, teff flour, corn flour, sweet potato flour) and 60% starch flours (tapoica starch/flour, potato flour and starch, white rice flour, sweet rice flour, arrowroot flour, cornstarch) As I tweak and adjust, I will continue sharing successful ones with you!

Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour Blend for Cookies Recipe

*makes 10 cups

Ingredients

Grain Flours
2 cups Sweet Sorghum Flour (made at home)
1.5 cups Oat Flour (easy to make at home)
.5 cup Buckwheat Flour (also made at home)

Starch Flours
3 cups Tapioca Starch/Flour
3 cups White Rice Flour

Recipe

1. Combine all flours in a large mixing bowl. Using a whisk, mix flour for upwards of 3 full minutes to make sure flour is extremely well-combined- the better it is mixed in, the better your flour will act in your recipe!

2. Save in airtight container.

*Tips: 

• I love Bob's Red Mill for a lot of these alternative flours. They are stone-ground and very pure.
• On homeground flours:
• Blend whichever grain you are intending to make flour with, using a high-speed blender for upwards of 1-2 mins. I use the silver Nutribullet and that works well for me.
• Sift flour to ensure there are no chunks in your flour and that everything is properly ground.