Can I substitute regular flour for gluten free flour? - Claire Elizabeth Creates (2024)

FAQs

Can I just replace regular flour with gluten-free flour? ›

Substitute by weight, not volume. Moreover, because they are finer, they weigh less than all-purpose flour, so it is a good idea to substitute your blend for the all-purpose by weight, rather than by volume. If the original recipe calls for 260 grams of all-purpose flour, substitute with 260 grams of your blend.

Each gluten-free flour blend reacts slightly differently with ingredients, and some desserts are too delicately calibrated to handle a blind substitution. So when can you swap? As a general rule, any wet, sugary batter with less flour can take a gluten-free blend and leave no one the wiser.

If you want to make gluten-free cookies or brownies, oat flour is a wonderful option. Still, it's best to follow a recipe specifically designed to work with oat flour. You can also use gluten-free flours like sorghum flour, buckwheat flour, or gluten-free 1:1 baking flour as an alternative to oat flour.

Gluten-free flours often contain fine starches, so they absorb more liquid than conventional flour. To address this, gluten-free recipes usually call for more liquid and produce looser batters. They may also call for a larger quantity of leavening, like baking powder, to help add volume and lighten the texture.

Longer baking times. Some of our gluten-free recipes even instruct you to bake beyond the time that a toothpick inserted into the baked good comes out clean. We found that whole-grain coffee cake, below, is such a recipe; if you pull this cake out of the oven too soon, it will have a very mushy texture.

Brown rice flour is about as close to a 1:1 substitute for all-purpose flour as it gets since it provides structure and a “wheat-like” flavor.

If you want to buy just one gluten-free flour, we highly recommend the Pillsbury all-purpose gluten-free flour. Not only is it our favorite gluten-free flour, and easy to use in gluten-free recipes, but it's also one of the few gluten-free flours currently on the market that is recommended for baking with yeast.

Tapioca flour: ideal as thickener or for healthy baking.

2 teaspoons of baking powder per cup of gluten-free flour is necessary to ensure proper leavening. Baking soda and buttermilk can be used to leaven instead of baking powder, but 1-1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar should be added for each 1/2 teaspoon baking soda used.

Why is gluten-free flour so gritty? ›

Gluten-free baked goods have earned the reputation of being dry and gritty. That grit—that evil grit! —is the result of gluten-free flours that are often high in starches and rice flour, which take longer to absorb moisture than regular “gluten” flour.

All gluten-free flours have a different taste. Some gluten-free flours are naturally sweet, some are nutty, while others have a strong flavor. When you're just getting started baking gluten-free, experiment with as many different flours as you can. Be sure to keep notes about which flours you like and which you don't.

This can be tricky because gluten free flours react differently in pretty much every recipe. But in general, use in place of all purpose or whole wheat flour in a 1:1 ratio. For extra binding (since there is no gluten) you can add a pinch of xanthan gum depending on the recipe, but I don't find it necessary.

Oats contain avenin, which is a protein similar to gluten. Research has shown that most people with coeliac disease can tolerate gluten free oats with no problems. The issue is that sometimes oats are produced in the same place as wheat, barley and rye, and then become contaminated with these other grains.

Almond flour can be substituted for regular flour at a 1:1 ratio. It is important to note that almond flour may require more egg to bind the flour. Check out our almond flour recipe book here for more information on a specific recipe!

Since all-purpose flour is a combination of soft and hard flours, a good substitution is a mixture of a soft flour, like cake flour, with a hard flour such as bread flour.

Best Overall: Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour

This mix, which has all recognizable ingredients (including sweet white rice flour, which is the main ingredient in mochi, a nice light, powdery, starchy flour that doubles as a binder), worked well in all three of our tests.

Gluten is what holds regular dough together, allowing the dough to be manipulated and creating structure for the dough to rise. Without gluten you need to add a binder as a substitute. The most popular binders are xanthan gum, guar gum and psyllium husk powder.

Without xanthan gum in a gluten-free bread or cake recipe for instance, the dough or batter would be dry and crumbly and would not rise, despite the presence of a leavening agent.