Easiest Budget Friendly Way to Gluten-Free Baking

Did you just find out that you or someone you cook for is celiac or gluten-sensitive? Do you feel like you are a deer in headlights needing to suddenly convert all your usual recipes to gluten-free baking? We’ve got you covered! In this article we are going to strip it way down and get you going as quickly as possible so that you can wrap your head around the very next meal coming up. After you get into a groove and at least have a handle on it, you can enjoy the challenge of changing things to your specific liking. Chin up, you can do it AND you just might enjoy being a recipe ninja warrior.

I remember fifteen years ago when we learned that three out the four of our family were celiac. We needed to eliminate all gluten NOW– like five minutes ago. The learning curve was huge and it needed to somehow be infused immediately into my brain. The kids needed to eat. They were just five and three years old and didn’t suddenly stop pulling on your leg for snacks. They also didn’t stop needing to be watched and cared for so spending a few days holed-up studying like mad to know what the heck to do for gluten-free baking wasn’t really an option. Meal times kept marching in a row to the beat of the clock. No pause to suddenly have gluten-free bread for lunch, dinner completely revamped, and breakfast ideas ready to go.

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Ready Made Gluten-Free Items

Fifteen years ago celiac awareness was just sprouting up and had not become the full-fledged movement it is today. The options for ready made gluten-free items were slim and were most definitely NOT family budget friendly (still aren’t). I remember picking up a loaf of gluten-free bread the first week. After tasting it, tears welled-up in my eyes. I asked, “Is this what we have to eat for the rest of our lives?” Cardboard, bark, dry– it utterly sapped all joy out of the culinary experience. At that moment, you feel like this ruins the social joie de vivre of food forever and it is amazingly depressing. Nowadays, there are huge selections of breads, muffins, cookies, waffles, pizza, crackers, cakes, bagels, tortillas available to choose from. Many of them are very good and a great hope to all celiacs everywhere.

But try buying all these items to replace what you used to buy. You will quickly realize that those things will have to be for special treats. Our food budget doubled overnight, and that was with me making everything from scratch. If we bought our bread and other common baked items for everyday needs, it would easily triple. With two teenagers, that would be like a second mortgage!

What ready-made items do I spring for?

After making everything from crackers, bread, to tortillas for quite some time, there are a few things that are worth the convenience of ready made because a meal needs to get to the table. These include: Banza pasta and Mission gluten-free flour tortillas. Banza pasta is a lower glycemic pasta made from chickpeas and can be found at Walmart, Grocery Outlet (sometimes), and Amazon. I am not gluten free but eat the same food that my three celiac famly members do and I actually prefer this pasta over regular wheat pasta. Mission tortillas can be found at Winco, Fred Meyer/Kroger, Rosauers, Walmart, and Grocery Outlet. I am sure there are other stores that carry it right alongside the regular flour tortillas.

Do I need a lot of exotic flours for gluten-free baking?

I have spent a huge amount of money over the years on specialty flours, gums, thickeners, etc. The great end conclusion for our family—–drum roll—– wait for it——those special fancy flours are fun BUT a simple easy-to-use ratio of inexpensive flours have become the preferred for taste, texture, and cost. It is perfectly alright to use these wonderfully exotic flours. Experiment to your heart’s content! But, sometimes you need to have a set plan for NOW until you have your feet under you. If you have very specific tastes then go at it with blessings. If you are a gourmand who greatly enjoys the task of finding just the right blend, blessings. Have a larger budget? Blessings also. But, for me– it was first a matter of the pressure of time to the next meal and it grew into a love of the challenge for good tasting food that the kids would actually like eating. For me, I don’t cry anymore.

Some tips for successful gluten-free baking

What is this secret ratio that makes baking from regular recipes so much clearer? Ahh, it is coming up. But first, here are some points to keep in mind when baking gluten-free. So that you don’t accidentally throw away perfectly good batter thinking that you ruined it.

• Gluten-free dough will always be wetter than it’s gluten counterpart. Those buttermilk biscuits that you used to flour and roll out with a rolling pin will now be spoon drop biscuits. Your bread dough in your bread machine will now be like brownie batter not the nice dough ball that you are used to.
• You will need to use some type of binder in your recipes to replace the role of gluten in holding things together. If a recipe included multiple eggs like puffed Dutch babies (German pancakes) they will act as the binder and you don’t need to add any other binder. Xantham gum is the usual replacement in most gluten-free recipes. Gelatin or flax gel can also be used. Aquafaba can also be helpful, especially for those with egg sensitivities. You may run across Guar gum at the store and it is NOT the same as xantham gum so don’t use it as an alternative to xantham gum.
• You will need to combine at least 2-3 different flours in a recipe to make it resemble the wheat counterpart more closely. Usually a main grain flour like brown rice, white rice flour, paired with a starchy flour such as tapioca, arrowroot, cornstarch, etc. These starchy flours are flours that you can think of as the thickener for pie filling.
• I find that there can be an aftertaste to using some flour choices, especially with fava or garbanzo flour. If that is a deterent then you might want to stick with the less strong flours such as brown rice flour or white teff.

Don’t give up!

• To change the mouth feel and texture of your finished baked good, you can adjust the recipe each time you bake it to make the desired result. Just tweet it a little at a time each time you make it. Write down what you used on a post it and stick it on your recipe for later. Yes, we all think we will remember! But we know that is not going to happen. So give yourself a break and just write it down.
  

The simplest ratio for gluten-free baking

I use a cup for cup flour substitution with the substitution flour blend a ratio of 1:1 with one part brown rice flour to one part tapioca starch. One of your blend always being a starchy flour if you don’t want to use tapioca starch. Add a 1/2 tsp. xantham per cup of flour, and add a little more liquid. For example: If a recipe calls for 2 cups of regular white flour, I will replace it with 2 cups total of my flour substitute blend of 1 cup of brown rice flour and 1 cup of tapioca starch with the added 1 tsp of xantham gum. There it is: simple, quick, and inexpensive. Get that meal on the table.

Batter thickness for cakes, muffins, breads:

As you mix the batter, you will most likely need to add more liquid depending on what you are making. Remember, it needs to be a little more wet than the regular batter. This holds true for most cakey, muffin-ey, bready type items. For muffin batter, the better shoudl resemble thicker pancake batter. For cakes, the spoon or mixer paddle should mover freely through the dough without it sticking together and following the paddle. For bread dough, it should be like brownie batter and not the dough ball of regular wheat dough.

Batter thickness for pie dough, tortillas, and pastry:

For pastry or other flat type items like pie dough or tortillas think really nice fresh soft play dough that just holds together versus firmer older playdough for pie dough or tortillas. You would then roll it out like normal dough using liberal sprinkling of rice flour to prevent sticking to the rolling pin, your hands, or tortilla press.

Batter for chewy items such as pizza dough, pretzels, or bagels:

Some items don’t translate too well with just the simple gluten free cup for cup ratio. This holds true for items with a chew factor like soft pretzels, bagels, cinnamon roll dough, or pizza dough. One item that can be added to help get this chew factor is Psyllium Husk. I add a minimum of one tablespoon per cup to our bread machine bread recipe . This results in a bit of soft chew effect and increased the fiber count. This can be purchased at Fred Meyer/ Kroger health food section or Amazon. Just make sure to read the description as there are many fiber type powders that have multiple added ingredients. You can experiment with adding 1 TBS. to 1/4 C. to your recipe to get the chewy factor you prefer.

What about grain-free?

For grain free, here is what we use:

• Cup for cup–1:1 ratio of almond flour and tapioca.
• 1/2 tsp. xantham gum per cup.
• Cut down the oil in the recipe a little bit (about 1/3) since the almond flour has some oil.
• Add an extra egg.
• Same batter thickness/ wetness as using grain-based gluten free recipes.

Budget friendly way to buy your flours

I buy our brown rice flour, white rice flour, and tapioca in bulk. You can get it at Winco, directly from Bob’s Red Mill, Rosaurs, or from Amazon. Xantham gum can be purchased at Walmart in the baking aisle, Rosaurers, Bob’s Red Mill, or Amazon. Sometimes, it’s a matter of your time and frustration trying to find all these specialty items. Do yourself a favor and call the stores before you head out or just order it in.

What would be my runner up flours?

My runner up flours if cost and time were not an issue would be white teff and cassava. For the starchy flour, if I find I am out of tapioca I would use arrowroot or potato starch (not potato flour). They would give a different texture and result but it would edible.

What if I don’t want to do xantham gum or eggs, how do I do flax gel?

Flax gel is a favorite xantham gum or egg replacement in recipes. It consists of grinding up flax seeds (I use the coffee grinder) then mixing it with boiling water in a 1:3 ratio of flax seed to hot water. Letting the flax seed and water sit for a minute or five minutes to let it gel up is where the magic happens. For one recipe, I would typically start with 1 TBS. of ground flax with 2-3 TBS. of boiling water to replace the xantham gum in a recipe or per egg. Caveat: to fine tune the end result to your liking, do more experimenting. Many celiacs cannot use gums and this gives an alternative. Flax seeds can be found in many bulk food sections.

Extra note:

We used coconut flour for awhile. But in the end, it wasn’t worth the cost of all the extra eggs needed and we didn’t really like the taste. Using coconut flour is a whole different beast and cannot be substituted cup of cup in regular recipes at all and required advanced experimenting. At this stage in baking, leave it for later when you have your feet under you.

Gluten-free baking quickstart sheet

To remember the basics of this article, just click the button below for your quickstart reference printable!

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