Discussion Board

I would have to do a test to find out. I have tried the standard GF mixes which usually have mostly rice flour, tapioca starch and potato starch. I guess these are supposed to mimic white flour. But I never liked white flour to begin with. So I use a mix of whatever i have on hand, usually corn, sorghum, garbanzo/fava bean, quinoa, and buckwheat. I use baking powder and zantham gum and lots of flax seed.

So I can't tell you what happens with only quinoa flour and I have no immediate plans to bake. I am very conscientious and eat everything I bake within 2 or 3 days so it doesn't go to waste As I'm hoping to shave off the 3 or 4 pounds i recently regained this is not the time.

SB, commercial gluten-free mixes or baked goods just about always include xanthan gum or another vegetable gum. It must be essential for texture in the absence of stretchy gluten, I guesss.

I think it has a slimy feel, and I wish they'd just leave it out of stuff. I bought it and it was extremely expensive stuff, and added nothing more than slime and nastiness to my baked products...I just go without...but my texture suffers a little...not real bad, but it is definitely different than coooking with glutenous grains. To me, the texture of the commercial mixes and baked stuff also suffers almost the same as mine, only with the addition of a nasty sliminess fromt the gums...just my own opinion, but I don't like the stuff at all.

I think if someone cooks with any gluten free flours (I haven't seen or tried quinoa flour, but guessin' they all share the same texture issue minus the gluten), they just have to get used to a different texture than what they were used to with gluten...even if they put in the gums...it's just not the same and never will be.

One good thing, though, is that the gf textures aren't necessarily a bad thing, if you just view them as something really different...and you can't really bake big or delicate stuff and expect it to hold up like gluten does...sandwich bread for example...YUCK! I finally just stopped trying to bake yeast breads...the results were just horrible gluten-free...I'd always baked bread myself since I first got married, over 30 years ago...so...I don't think it was ME...I think gluten free yeast bread just flatout sucks. The mixes aren't really any better than my homemade attempts, alhtough someimtes if we're dying for pizza I do buy the yeast mixes with the gums just because it's easier to get a crappy product that way than doing it from scratch ---why put so much time into making something gross???

Anyway...I also use Tapioca Loaf as sandwich bread...but you just have to brown it and then it still doesn't relaly hold up well...but since I can't seem to get myself out of sandwich mentality...I go ahead and use that stuff and eat strangely textured sandwiches.

But if you attempt to bake with gluten free flours...my advice (for whatever it's worth, of course ) would be to keep things small (large, delicately balanced cakes for example...will want to crumble and not hold under their own weight--make flat, smaller cakes--I put a recipe for "bread" on this board a few days back I made up that I like too...I bake the little individual "loaves" in 4" teensie cake pans...cut therough the center of each "loaf" and then griddle it to put whatever toppings on), and work with baking powder rather than yeast...I'd just leave out the gums...they really cannot duplicate the gluten at all.

For whatever those opinions are worth, of course, as I said before. I posted some of my groundhogg day-dreaming, meandoring ideas about growing quinoa-like grains on your Lounge post, by the way!

Hmmm...I haven't seen those brands....we don't have a Whole Foods, though, either. Also...probably about a year ago I stopped searching high and low for bread, real bread, feeling like it was just a thing of the past for me, forever! I think I tend to get very grumpy when I talk BREAD!

I tried really hard to get my mindset de-Westernized enough to go out of sandwich mode, wrap mode, etc., and just have different kinds of breads that were entirely non-Western...no texture expectations...I've done that a little bit...but, really...I'm too Western, having lived in this culture my entire life...to get that outta me entirely.

I get just grumpy when I think of bread...I could really use one of them vanilla iced Kinnikinnick (I still can't spell it right!) donuts RIGHT NOW!!!! I mean, that'd certainly alleviate the grumpiness of the glutenless groundhog...

LOL! I have given up on bread for me, my daughter likes food for life also.
I think I created a donut addict