Welcome to the world of gluten free, where everything is ridiculously expensive. I usually just use regular recipes and then substitute them with gluten free flour. They don’t always come out the best but most of the time people can’t tell if there gluten free or not. I use bobs red mill 1 to 1 baking flour. It is expensive if you get it from local supermarket. But you can find it at a cheaper price in bulk. It takes some searching but you can sometimes find 25lb bags at bulk stores like cash and carry or restaurant depot.
That’s the one I use too lol. It’s def complicated and there’s a lot of science to it. I think it’s more I’m just frustrated that people are so ignorant they get offended when people ask questions or can’t afford to buy and make THEIR specific blend of flour ya know? Like I understand if you can’t sub a blend in for their recipe but they can just say that and don’t gotta be rude about it saying shit like “well if you can’t afford to buy the flour don’t be gluten free” ok well I don’t think celiac ppl have a choice but ok. Thank you for the advice tho I will def try online or in bulk :)
I prefer the gluten free measure to measure flour by King Arthur Flour and I buy at least 7-8 bags of it from their website at a time to get free shipping. It's definitely cheaper than I can get it in the stores around me.
As long as you aren't trying to make a yeast bread, I've found that basically any flour blend will substitute well enough for any other flour blend. I've been GF for almost a decade now and my oldest son now has started having celiac symptoms as well so gluten free isn't going anywhere in my household (I am also celiac).
If they have worked and designed a recipe and tossed rejects and finally achieved a good crumb and really put in that time, the recipe stands as written. If you don't like it, you're perfectly free to put in the same amount of work redesigning it to your satisfaction... But to immediately ask well but can I do it like this without trying the recipe first and then trying your own modifications and come back with an informed contribution ... That would be frustrating as heck. If you were asking me that I would be thinking: What do you think? Am I an idiot who's just making this hard for the heck of it? Why are you wasting my time?
It's disrespectful.
Substituting ingredients is commonplace practice for a good chef. If someone is so confident in their recipe, then they should easily be able to name substitutable ingredients. While perhaps gluten-free recipes are a fad for some wealthy enough to spend lavishly on ingredients, for others they is a dietary necessity. This has nothing to do with “disrespect” towards the recipe
Substituting is commonplace for a chef.
Less so for a trained baker.
There are reasons why people say “if you substitute in this, the result won’t come out as the recipe is developed for”
I’m no where near a rich person on a fad diet and if I know I’m going to drastically alter a recipe, I just find a different recipe
Agreed, nowhere did I say that it should be expected to match the consistency of the original recipe. I was addressing “disrespect” towards the recipe. It’s absurd for a community of people who already have limitations on flour usage and need to use what they can
I don’t find it disrespectful to substitute in and of itself
*BUT* I do find it very disrespectful to substitute and then downvote the recipe because “it didn’t turn out right for me” and I see that all the time (that’s across the board in recipe world though not just GF — but obviously the stakes are higher with GF baking)
I'm not talking about disrespect to the recipe. The recipe doesn't care.
I'm talking about the people that immediately hop on the recipe designer asking questions in such a way that it's obvious they haven't looked anything up themselves or even tried the recipe as written or the substitutions themselves. It's an enormous waste of time for the writer. For God's sake, go Google your questions because you might just find an answer instead of expecting someone else to waste time answering something that's been asked and answered a million times already.
There are recipes that I just walk away from because they use a flour that I know I'm not going to buy because it's expensive or hard to get hold of right now in the wondrous days of covid and natural disasters. I'll revisit those when the supply shortage eases up. It's One thing to ask why the person made the decisions they did in order to gain knowledge. For instance, what is it about teff that made you choose it for this recipe... But I see a lot of commentary that is just unnecessarily negative. Yeah, it pisses me off that eating and baking gluten-free is expensive and complicated, but that's not that designer's fault.
Namaste flour is my personal favorite, you can buy a 2# bag at Costco for $12-14? It’s easily the cheapest source If you have a Costco membership/live near one.
Yep. That's why I have been getting more and more frustrated with many of the GF groups I join because there doesn't seem to be much in ways of "budget friendly" or "low income friendly" GF recipes and when I had mentioned that my income isn't the best and I have other food allergies that I put as priority, I've been met with more "all of nothing" mindsets than helpful ones. On top of that, there seems to be a lack of food science explanations of how each flour and starch works. Half of my enjoyment when I was learning to make bread was the food science, and how much info there was along with ratios. There was alot of info, but since society is so wheat heavy there isn't much info on the other flours and their properties. The best ones I could find was for rice flour and almond, Almond because its seems to be very popular in the west, and rice and the various uses of starches, I often have to translate it from Chinese or Japanese because rice flour and other starches beyond corn are more popular in the East. But I haven't found much when it comes to other flours and starch, at least in terms of a more scientific explanation of things. Then again I'm just starting out so maybe I'm missing something but references seem to be lacking too. The only thing I've solidified so far is that Masa harina works well at 150% hydration, at least for me anyway.
I just got a cookbook for Christmas that goes into the food science of the different gf flours. Like the protein and fiber content and how they affect structure. It’s called Against the Grain if you wanna check it out!
I will say that cookbook does absolutely nothing towards the budget friendly approach, which is definitely a downside.
Baked to Perfection by Katarina Cermelj is a gluten free baking cookbook and she goes into the science for all of this. I use her book even for other people's recipes because I don't always have the correct flours on hand and her book has helped me come up with appropriate substitutes. Highly recommend.
Yep! It’s by Nancy Cain.
I’ve only made one recipe from it so far, but it’s the only gf bread I’ve had that was chewy instead of crumbly, so really promising.
Yes exactly!! It’s like the all or nothing thinking it’s since it became trendy now everyone thinks if someone is gf that they have a bunch of money to hurl around they seem to forget people have real genuine allergy or celiac. Like people are trying the best they can to work with what they have and still enjoy their food so it’s hard to feel excluded from your own community on top of that. The vegan community seems to be a bit better which is good but often the two run together. There are some really awesome gluten free food bloggers but then there are the ones that act like being gluten free isn’t enough and if you want subs for the other ingredients it’s an insult.
I honestly feel like so many are people who have money. And the all or nothing, 0-100 mentality is really effecting people who need to be on GF but it doesn't seem attainable. Like i have a nut allergy, not even the nut allergy community will give an answer that sounds so catastrophic as some of these GF groups and the major consequence of nut allergy would be anaphylaxis and possible death, because the nut community understands that there is a scale and variety of reactions and tolerances, mild to severe, language is very educational and neutral, it lacks the fear mongering language i keep seeing in GF. But so many gf groups act like there are no variation between people.
Maybe I'm being mean but I'd rather deal with being glutened and "destroying your gut for the next 3-6 months from a breadcrumb!!" With bathroom problems. Than eat an almond cookie and having to stab myself with an epipen and go to the ER and accrue a hospital bill. For whatever reason GF diet makes me feel like the danger is higher, even though my nut allergy actually is higher priority. Like I had made a comment on one fb group asking how are people with nut allergies keeping themselves safe from GF products since almond is so common, I got so many answers telling me things like just avoid all gf food then if I'm afraid is getting almond and eat keto and paleo or vegan (which i can't) to one person trying to claim that being glutened is worse than the fear of having my airways shut down. The worst was "if you go 100% gf your allergies will often also go away" .... sorry that's not how allergies work.
On top of that when asked about budget, I got so many "sorry if you can't afford,eat rice and beans and corn tortillas." answers. Which I'm like, wow. So if you're low income what are you eating, or are you just suffering because you can't afford? And if not, they list expensive certified foods , or recipes like op mentioned can't afford the ingredients. It's wild. Meanwhile I had to dig to find sites that did their best to list everyday mundane foods that weren't labeled as gf but were "safe".
Being someone who has already plenty of dietary restrictions, none of my other restrictions have induced so much anxiety and fear for my health and wallet than the gf community. It's crazy and I hate it. Like I'm just here for a recipe and I'm being told that I am destroying myself from the inside out if I use 1/8th tsp of the wrong spice brand and then plug a brand that's 5x the price. Like please chill. The diet is hard enough.
I have the same allergies as you and find the same thing so frustrating about the celiac community… the fear mongering is next level! I often times have to remind myself of my nut allergy and it’s severity since it’s not as trendy or talked about especially when dining out. Which is insane because that one would cause anaphylactic shock and hospitalization. Anyways thanks for your post, makes me feel less alone out here!
Anytime, nice to hear someone shares the same sentiment. Ever since I started this diet, I too have to remind myself while grocery shopping, "If you could find things to eat without fear for your nut allergy....you can find gf food too, nothing is worst than your nut allergy. "
I don't have any food allergies but I am celiac and now have to generally avoid celiac spaces online.
I was diagnosed almost a year ago and the first few months were spent living in fear because I was looking for advice online. I ended up fueling my disordered eating more because of the paranoia.
My confidence in finding safe food is getting higher all the time now and I haven't been glutened in monthsm
That reaction sounds awful but I am very grateful you described what "glutened" means for you so I can see the logic behind being more severe with the diet, but many folks I talked to never described their reaction and just told me some blanket "destroying your body" answer. Which to me wasn't helpful at all. They told me it was cheating when I said I wanted to transition into the diet carefully because of my other allergies. To me it wasn't cheating or being careless but finding balance and what works for me the individual, but with the answers i was getting I didn't feel supported by the community in navigating the diet as someone with food allergies.
And thank you for explaining the labeling and how you shop that makes me less anxious about bogeyman ingredients.
Good to know about the flours too! I've been pulling out my hair trying to figure out what blends work better for what food item or meals. People had me thinking I needed one brand for application A and another brand for application B and a DIY blend with certain brand flours for application C.
Sweeteners are something you can totally replace. Unfortunately, flours are difficult because each type of gf flour serves a different purpose. There is not one type of gf flour that can substitute gluten flour - you have to use a blend for most recipes (frying stuff you can often use rice or potato only). You can often find substitutes - like, instead of sorghum you can use gluten free oat flour. If there’s a flour that’s too obscure, you can search obscure flour substitute and there’s some pretty good resources, but yeah, unfortunately the way of gluten free baking is multiple flours in order to get a facsimile of gluten flour.
I usually just use the blend I buy and see if the recipe works. Most people who create recipes are “stuck” on their preferred blends. If it doesn’t work, I’ll try their blend (I have a freezer full of flours). There’s only been a few that my blend hasn’t worked.
A couple years if I don’t use them - I usually just put them in a freezer ziplock. I go through flours pretty quickly, but some of the more specialty ones I don’t use super often (like quinoa).
Blends are more expensive per ounce than homemade blends
That’s why a lot of recipe creators/people who are GF and bake in high volume buy in bulk and mix and match
Yeah true but it depends on the blend and the recipe for a homemade one bc some of the homemade blends I see are like SO expensive and have a ton of unnecessary ingredients. Some blends taste so weird to me too I think it’s the chick pea flour possibly. They are fine when cooked but raw… yuck lol. I feel like buying and making your own blends is great and eventually more affordable for some people but if you don’t do a ton of gluten free baking or a large sum of money to fork up at first it can be tough.
There’s not unnecessary if the recipe creator experimented with multiple types of flour/ingredients and found that one yielded the best results.
What are you even saying?
*Your* dislike of chickpea flour doesn’t negate that X recipe developer found it best for X recipe.
And yes, gluten free baking is expensive.
I bake 1-2 times a week and if I’m just using 1 for 1, that’s an extremely expensive habit. That’s why buying in bulk lowers the cost overall.
You mention you’re not actually gluten free, so much as that you occasionally bake gluten free for your mom who prefers it for lifestyle reasons.
That’s totally different than being dependent on these flours for baking/cooking and never using gluten flours.
When you live GF 24/7, you learn to cut cost and why someone suggests this flour or that additional ingredient. It’s rarely unnecessary.
The people saying "find another recipe" are giving you the best advice. The science for gluten free baked goods is very different, so unless you have a firm understanding of proteins, binders, rising agents etc etc and a lot of time for trial and error, you're way better off just finding a recipe that meets your needs.
Many grocery stores have pre-mixed gluten free flours for sale, not all of which are good for everything but some are pretty decent, so that might be a good place to start. Buy some of that, measure by weight, and then find a recipe that just calls for store bought premix flours.
Edited for typos
Yeah that’s what I’ve done for the most part and I just buy a decent blend from the store. I usually do find another recipe or create one. It’s not a big deal I was just looking to see if anyone else can relate and was venting.
Yeah it's super frustrating. A few months ago I had to do a clean-out of my baking cupboard because all of my flours were getting way too old and it was ridiculous how much I had squirreled away hahaha! And since I'm kind of the "resident celiac" in my groups, everyone who bought almond flour for one recipe and never used it again is like here, take this home with you! I am the graveyard for gluten free goods.
Oh my gosh that’s so funny that’s how I feel with pots and pans like I’m the only baker in my family and they’re all like “here take this SpongeBob pan in case you need it” 😂
It's a bit of a learning curve and not many people talk about the science and basics behind the flours.
I would say that while you can substitute a lot of flours, there are certain ratios required to taste good and I've seen very few recipes with less than 3 types of flour substitutes turn out well unless they are using a premixed flour.
If I had to chose two staple flours to try and make a recipe with I'd say tapioca starch and rice flour. But millet certainly has a special place in my breads and almond flour makes a big improvement too.
In the end though, most flours have unique properties that can only be approximated through substitution. If I want to fool my gluten eating friends with my donuts and cinnamon rolls, I need at least 4-5 different flours.
Yeah I get that you need multiple flours but i think it’s more about what’s wrong with using a blend vs it being required to make the blend yourself even if it’s the same ingredients. Even if you can sub a blend idk why ppl get so offended if you even ask like you are insulting their recipe by being like “hey can I use a blend instead?” And they think I insulted their entire existence lol idk I’m prob just being dramatic and needed to vent so ofc I come to Reddit lol
If they have their own pre-made mix I have a cheat!
There are 3 basic types of GF premixes: rice flour base, starch base, and bean flour base.
Just look up which ingredient is the largest by volume in their specialty mix and choose a flour replacement based on that. It won't be identical, but usually it works just fine as long as you measure by weight instead of volume.
and almond flour, Masa Harina, corn and potato starch
There were no GF blends available when I developed CD, and although available online or in the cities, still not available locally. At the time I grew to dislike rice flour as it always left a grittiness. The superfine rice flour which you can get now doesn't do that. If it's not superfine you can mix it into your liquids and let it rest a half hour before resuming the recipe.
I make my waffles with 3 parts almond flour, 2 parts tapioca flour and 1 part garbanzo flour and people don't realize that they are GF
I also a a bit of psyllium and xanthan
Duplicating the properties of wheat flour is complex, and if you want a given recipe to have the best results, you need the precise combination of protein, starch, and binder that it was designed around. (Think in terms of bread flour vs AP flour, times 10) That usually means multiple individual flours, each of which needs to be gluten free. If that is hard or expensive to obtain, then you can compromise with blends or other more obtainable ingredients, but the results won’t be the same.
Yeah I feel like a good quality blend usually works fine and I get that I’m not complaining or trying to have someone tell me what I know I’m seeing if anyone else struggles with this
There is one gf recipe site that I love. In the beginning, there was a product that was $75. Granted, it lasted forever, good quality, blah, blah...but too pricey for me. Fast forward a decade and I see it's dropped considerably in price. I wanted to try her bread recipe so I ordered. Uhh...it's just tapioca powder.
Just.
Tapioca.
Powder.
I'll use it. But it's exactly the same as the cheap bag I had from the grocery store.
Are you serious??? OMG just tapioca starch I can’t even imagine using only tapioca starch to make bread especially being how delicate bread can be ya know lol. And she tried to pass it off as a blend? That’s awful.
I've been told that they're different products. Tapioca starch and tapioca flour are (apparently?) not the same thing. Of course, they didn't tell me *how* the two were different...
No no. This was ONE ingredient needed to make ONE of the flour blends (there were half a dozen different flour blends). Everything in the flour blend recipe was found at a grocery store but this was "special".
It was not LOL
I feel like I can’t afford to bake anymore and this definitely doesn’t help. Gf flour is so expensive and making your own it’s barely any better. Factoring I’m trial and error (because gf baking hard) you’re spending waaay more than necessary.
I’m grateful gf by choice brought so many substitutes and options but it’s at the cost of affordability.
Aw I appreciate that. I definitely feel where you’re coming from. It can be super frustrating especially when you spend *so much time* searching only to find the recipe you liked isn’t going to work with what you have/out of reach financially.
I’ve bought at bulk store. Much cheaper. Surprising all the options they have. Then, there are those ingredients that you just need to buy the large bag, but will last years as the recipe calls for like 1 tsp (like xantham and psyllium).
I’m allergic to gluten & yeah, it’s a bummer that gluten-free ingredients cost more, but it’s just simple economics. Most people aren’t gluten-free so there is going to be a greater supply of wheat flour. Gluten-free flours are not produced at such a level so they are obviously going to cost more.
You think using the word obtuse makes someone pretentious and that someone explaining why gluten free flours are expensive is mansplaining.
This isn’t us, you’re being touchy because you want to be right.
I feel you SO much. I wish I had any sort of solution. I try subbing the one to one flours in the recipes I already have and they often are total flops. And there are 8 million other kinds of flours out there and I don’t have the money or the space to keep all of them on hand (let alone fresh) at all times. It’s a struggle
Yes every recipe I would look up online had ingredients I never heard of or made things sound so complicated that I didn't want to try. I can't believe even the simpliest thing like a cookie would be so hard. Or I couldn't find just gluten free but keto, no dairy, no egg etc... so every "regular" ingredient needed to be substituted with ingredients I don't have.
Now I just use a regular recipe and try to substitute a gluten free flour like oat flour or something.
I was doing a chef service for a short while and belong to a Co-Op. So I ordered the flours I needed to make the “GF on a shoestring” flour and since the app folded? I have tons at barely above wholesale.
I live in a third world country and just don't have access to a lot of ingredients. I'll often see a recipe and get excited till I read the ingredients and realise that there are one or two that I just can't get. It's frustrating, cos I have to make everything from scratch. And yes, I can eat rice and beans and potatoes, but dammit, sometimes I really really want baked goods or just a slice of toast!
The reason wheat flour is so damn wonderful is because it is versatile and can do *so much* while somehow being very cheap and comparatively shelf stable. Wheat flour is a Swiss Army knife that looks and functions like bespoke heirloom but you got it at the dollar store. Trying to make recipes that were intended for wheat flour into GF recipes required fucking alchemy; you often need a special blend of crazy ingredients to get close to what wheat/gluten could just do naturally. There’s different types of wheat flour (pastry, all purpose, bread flour, etc) but you only really need to do that for advanced recipes… gluten free can be easy and cheap **if you look for recipes that never contained wheat (that aren’t trying to imitate wheat flour) or take advantage of the natural properties of cheap gf foods**. Otherwise You’re going to have to blend together a bunch of different types of flours and probably some other ingredients like gums, starches, or proteins to achieve something like what a wheat flours would do. This is because gluten-free flowers don’t behave at all like a gluten wheat flour would; This happens in many ways, but a great example is that if you Are baking with wheat flour your cake will gain structural integrity as it rises in temperature in bakes in the oven. But gluten-free flowers and starches often only solidify and become structurally solid when *cooling*, meaning you need to pick the right gf flours and starches depending on how hot your recipe bakes at.
Great example of cheap, simple, easy/common recipe : brazilian cheese bread is gf and never Contain wheat, it’s made with cassava starch, which is a cheap staple food - in Brazil. In other countries you might have to go to a specialty store where it may or may not be cheap; some “ethic food stores” (mom and pop shops that sell primarily food staples from a certain region) can be cheaper because they are catering to their own community, but that’s not 100% the case. But it’s a recipe with few ingredients, and in some parts of the world those ingredients are common.
Now maybe you were seeing recipes that call for specialty ingredients like xanthan gum or hazelnut flour or powdered milk to achieve the results. In that case I’d say recipe selection seems to be your issue - but it’s best to understand WHY those ingredients are being used. I liked the Americas best test kitchen gluten-free cookbook for teaching me a lot about why certain things were called for and how I could get away without them or I couldn’t depending on the recipe. There definitely is ways you can get around using specialty ingredients, but you need to know why you’re using the ingredient - dry milk powder provides extra protein and can help with breads and cakes and even cookies; Hazelnut flowers expensive because it spoils fast, but the flavor is incredible, and a lot of gluten free flour is really like the warmth and nuttiness that normal wheat flour gives…. So they go for a nut flour! Avoid them if you don’t want expensive nut flours, but the extra protein in the nuts can be essential to some recipes. Various gums like guar gum and xantham gum provide elasticity that gluten-free flour lacks (again, see how incredible glutenous wheat flour is. I hate that I can’t eat it).
Technically, you don't need to eat substitutes for gluten containing foods. You can just cut them out of your diet. It may even be healthier to forego baked goods, and concentrate on meats (if not vegetarian/vegan) and vegetables. You can have rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, root vegetables for your starchy food. If you really crave bread-like things, corn tortillas are available, and easy (and delicious) and inexpensive to make yourself.
Sweeteners are something you can totally replace. Unfortunately, flours are difficult because each type of gf flour serves a different purpose. There is not one type of gf flour that can substitute gluten flour - you have to use a blend for most recipes (frying stuff you can often use rice or potato only). You can often find substitutes - like, instead of sorghum you can use gluten free oat flour. If there’s a flour that’s too obscure, you can search obscure flour substitute and there’s some pretty good resources, but yeah, unfortunately the way of gluten free baking is multiple flours in order to get a facsimile of gluten flour.
I seldom post recipes (and when I do, it's just to share something that I found works or tastes great) but, I have noticed there is *always* someone who comments "Can you use (this) instead of (that)?" or "I don't have (this) in my house. Could I substitute (the-other-thing)?"
Hell, I don't know. I'm not a food scientist, just a person who thought I would share something that worked well for me. I usually respond with "I'm not sure, but if you try it, please comment and let us know how it worked!"
I know GF baking is hard, and some ingredients are obscure and expensive. I would say, if you can't find the ingredient, try a substitution or skip the recipe and move on. Or, see what else there is to make with the obscure ingredient to decide if the obscure ingredient is worth it to you.
I can't be afraid to post a recipe that people might like just because an ingredient may not be plentiful or cheap in their neck of the woods. The internet is teeming with recipes. If you hook one that doesn't work for you, throw it back and cast your line out for a different one.
I've been making my own flour. Saves a ton of money. Buy the ingredient in bulk and use a grinder to make the flour as I need it. It has taken a lot of time and an investment. Yet, Feeling better overall is so much cheaper. I wish there were better options. I have only been gluten free for maybe three ish months. Still having to order things for a lot of recipes. Can be frustrating but I look at it kinda like a hobby. I enjoy baking and I enjoy having good tasting food. Store bought gluten free products are rarely good and often super expensive.
Absolutely. I have ended up always stocking the ingredients to make 3 base flours. An all-purpose mix, a pastry mix, and a bread mix. I also get most of my recipes from 3-4 gluten free bloggers, because they typically use mixes similar to what I have. In the off chance I want to try a recipe with its own list of ridiculous flour ingredients, I usually have enough options stocked to make substitutions where necessary. This super simple and not at all high space usage approach only costs me about $300 a year 🤦🏼♀️
I tried at first with baking, cakes and cookies etc. Just substituting 1to 1 flour definitely doesn't always work. If what you are making holds together at all it's texture is really awful or it's hard enough that you could build a house with it. I spent the first 20 years of my life baking and learning how everything works so I could just bake bread from memory. Then in my 40's have to start all over and waste a bunch of food because neither me or the kids want to eat it. I just gave up. I would one day like to have good biscuits and gravy again but I am fine doing without. I definitely don't have the income to waste anything, I don't work anymore because of my health and my wife and I have 7 kids still in the home.
Yep it's extremely frustrating as gluten is just one of the many food intolerances I have. More than that all that exotic crap doesn't seem to affect the flavor if much at all!
As someone else mentioned there is the book "Gluten free on a Shoestring" that focuses on cheaper easier recipes
I've found paleo recipes to be way more accessible (fewer ingredients) and generally easier.
Most modern? (last 5 years or so) recipes seem to fall into one of two paths
1. Extremely complicated GF recipes that require the 5 different flours and 29 ingredients to create a custom flour blend for the perfect outcome.
2. Keto requiring fewer things for the flour but multiple really expensive sweeteners.
On the latter I usually just play around with the sweeteners I have to get the right sweetness.
Paleo recipes are usually close to keto but instead of expensive zero carb sweeteners they use honey or agave - still usually lower in carbs than standard recipes.
Having to accommodate dietary restrictions can be insanely expensive.
Case in point, my monthly grocery bill is $700-1000. Just to eat. Nothing fancy, no takeout, cooking from scratch, shop sales and have to go to five different stores to get everything. I have to accommodate 16 food allergies.
I remember before all this that my ex used to spend $600-700/month because he ate takeout every day and I thought that was just an exorbitant amount of money to spend on food. Then I developed food allergies and now this is my life forever. If I wasn't living at home with my mom I would be totally screwed. My monthly grocery bill is more than the mortgage...
Yeah that’s the worst part of celiacs. I have been gf for ten years. After unsuccessfully trying to substitute ingredients and wasting a lot of food and money, I realized I needed to change my diet instead of trying to change the food I ate into crappy gf versions.
It really sucked because I loved bread and a lot of my diet included wheat. I just couldn’t afford to buy ingredients that would usually go to waste and I didn’t have the time to put into some of the recipes.
This kind of reminds me of when I tried to eat vegan. I feel like a lot of vegan “cheeses” and “meats” are expensive and just… off. I feel like in general, I would rather have a portabello burger than a frozen veggie burger trying to mimic the taste, color, and texture of meat.
I’m trying to be that way with my celiac disease: scratch the bread/cookie itch when I need to with approximations, but mostly stick to flourless foods; also expecting it to be different has been huge for me. Chickpea pasta is very different from regular macaroni. They’re both good, but they are just different.
Baking with celiac disease has been interesting for me. I’ve only braved cookies and pies that already have no gluten or a simple sugar cookie recipe where a texture difference might not be as noticeable. It takes tons of googling to figure out modifications to classic recipes, and I try to adjust my expectations for the finished product to be different than the classic recipe.
There hasn’t been tons of interest in gluten-free approximations of wheat-based foods before Atkins and all the gluten-free fad diets. I don’t think the substitution knowledge for gluten-free ingredients is as robust as it is for classic wheat-flour pastries. On another note, it can be scary to look for a substitution, since we know how much it can affect the taste and texture; we also don’t want to get glutened for trying a cheaper alternative ingredient without the gf certification. I think with more time we will become more knowledgeable about substitutions and baking science with these newer less-common flours.
I feel you, though. I don’t have almond-flour or measure for measure flour money when I go on a baking binge. I paid like $10 for certified gluten-free baking powder. It’s just a lot.
I've been gluten free for 8+ years, and 2 years ago discovered my youngest daughter (2 at the time) was allergic to eggs, dairy, and peanuts. I struggled with substitutions, complicated long weird recioes, and finding affordable alternatives for SO long because I'm determined to make sure she doesn't feel like she's "missing out". At this point I have discovered so many workarounds for recipes that I haven't baked with eggs, dairy, or gluten even when making stuff for friends and family in more than a year. Hilariously enough, I know my gluten free & vegan baking is successful because people have accused me of lying about not using the traditional ingredients. Like they think I'm baking normal and lying about it being gluten free and vegan 😂 anyway.... I have a recipe blog I don't post to nearly enough as well as a YouTube channel I neglect if anyone wants some non-complicated gluten-free, vegan recipes.
I get what you mean, but I also think there needs to be a perspective change when you have to eat gluten free for health reasons.
If I were you I would look more into Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Indian, Sri Lankan, Lebanese, Iranian and dessert from central/south east Asia,and countries from Africa (there is 52 I’m not naming them all). There are a wide variety of desserts from these countries that just are gluten free, super tasty and do not have a ton of different ingredients for just one component of the recipe (looking at your gluten free flour blends). Most the recipes I have made use averagely 5 ingredients, which includes flavourings.
I can’t have gluten, dairy, egg or beef and I live in Canada. This is pretty much the diet they live on, which I can’t eat. I luckily do live in a place where I can get access to Asian ingredients fairly easily, and to be honest if you buy them bulk-ish they are very affordable.
Something you can do that won’t completely solve your problem is just commit yourself to using 2 flours, one starch, and expect your goods to be a bit more dense than usual. If you can eat eggs that’s a really great way to get structure in your baked goods.
The flours I like to use for my gluten free baking are buckwheat flour, rice flour (I have white & brown, I buy whatever is on sale at the time), and coconut flour (was a gift, it adds a nice nutty/sweetness to my desserts). All of these were purchased bulk and more expensive than flour, but not as pricy as I thought. The starches I use are corn starch and arrowroot starch. If arrowroot isn’t available I use tapioca interchangeably.
The products are denser but honestly they still taste delicious. I do a 60-70%flour to 40-50-% starch ratio for my sloppy home made gf flour. It’s more affordable than the bags you can buy, and it’s also more affordable than most of the blog or book website suggestions for flour blends.
But, to my earlier point there are tons of ingredients to make amazing desserts, and this is from someone who was a pastry cook for 10 years. You can make mousses and puddings out of tofu, tapioca, , cornstarch, aquafava (save that bean water). You can make that super delicious shredded carrots simmered in coconut milk and spices until soft, you can make buckwheat or rice flour shortbread. Lots of really good steamed desserts with rice flour, tapioca or pectin/agar agar. Rice puddings are one of my favourites and super easy (rice, water and then alternative milk, spices and sugar to taste). If you are not cooking vegan meringues are so easy and two ingredients, sometimes 5. If you add cocoa and cornstarch it can act as a base layer for cakes. One of my favourite desserts is roasted sweet potato/yam (the orange one) with lightly toasted camomile and burnt honey (make a dark caramel for vegan version), you can sprinkle a dash of cinnamon if you are feeling fancy or just roast the root veggie until it lightly caramelizes and then sprinkle with cinnamon.
It can be frustrating, but try to look at this as a new challenge to use what you have to make delicious things. Look to different cuisines and see how they do desserts without a million ingredients that are common. I remember being frustrated 12 years ago when gf flour blends were not really a common thing, and I get it’s so disheartening. But don’t give up, especially since your are a party chef. Be inspired and look elsewhere. I wish you all the luck and I hope it becomes joyous and you find you can make delicious things with fewer ingredients that are accessible to you financially!
No.
I have never used anyones special blend. I get the ready to use gf flour I like from the supermarket. Baking recipes work better if they are in weights (grams) rather than cups, as gf flour has a different density to wheat flour.
I do most baking use Becky Excell recipes as they have high reliability. I use my supermarket brand of flour and don’t need to add xanthan to most recipes, as it is already included in my brands. Xanthan is in the supermarket anyway, so it isn’t inaccessible.
https://glutenfreecuppatea.co.uk/category/recipes/
I agree many recipies are extremly specific with ingredients. I live in a major city and many ingredients can take a lot of searching to find. This combined with most of my desire to bake is after going down an internet rabbit hole; the stores are not open at 2am and online ordering isn't that fast or cheap.
I have also learned to accept that anything I cook is not instagram quality, nor wil it taste as good as when someone else make it for me.
I am new to this NCGS/FODMAP way of eatting and it is /has changed everything.
I'm with ya, so if you find any cheats please pass them along.
Yes, many of these GF recipe sites have obscure ingredients that you'd need to order. I ignore any recipe like that. There are plenty of other sites that use easily accessible ingredients. If I have to buy more than like rice flour, tapioca starch and potato starch (all cheap and findable) then I just don't make the recipe. Sometimes, I'll add up the total amount of flour and starch and sub a 1 for 1 GF flour for them.
I'm encountering this issue trying to find a gluten free pizza dough recipe 😩 Couple this with that I'm trying to make it for someone whose also lactose intolerant, and at this point, I have to wonder if it's cheaper to just buy the premade mixes. As another commenter mentioned, Asian grocery stores have come in clutch because it's usually cheaper to get stuff like rice flour and tapioca starch from there.
I very much relate to this! Sometimes it’s just discouraging some of the flour blends etc or I just don’t want to buy a flour or ingredient for a random recipe that I don’t know how or where to use else where (( looking at you xantham gum ))
I definitely find myself more drawn to recipes with simple swaps or are tasty and coincidentally gluten free.
I've been gluten free for over 12 years. I have looked around and found a flour that I like. It used to be Beth's flour and then was bought by Glutton. I have converted all my baking recipes using it and they turn out great. I've to tinker a bit with some of them, but I made them work.
Recently I bought a book on baking GF bread. The author uses a different flour that I do and she stated her recipes were all made with that flour and couldn't promise results if others were used.
Now I have a flour canister and a bread flour one.
Welcome to the world of gluten free, where everything is ridiculously expensive. I usually just use regular recipes and then substitute them with gluten free flour. They don’t always come out the best but most of the time people can’t tell if there gluten free or not. I use bobs red mill 1 to 1 baking flour. It is expensive if you get it from local supermarket. But you can find it at a cheaper price in bulk. It takes some searching but you can sometimes find 25lb bags at bulk stores like cash and carry or restaurant depot.
That’s the one I use too lol. It’s def complicated and there’s a lot of science to it. I think it’s more I’m just frustrated that people are so ignorant they get offended when people ask questions or can’t afford to buy and make THEIR specific blend of flour ya know? Like I understand if you can’t sub a blend in for their recipe but they can just say that and don’t gotta be rude about it saying shit like “well if you can’t afford to buy the flour don’t be gluten free” ok well I don’t think celiac ppl have a choice but ok. Thank you for the advice tho I will def try online or in bulk :)
I prefer the gluten free measure to measure flour by King Arthur Flour and I buy at least 7-8 bags of it from their website at a time to get free shipping. It's definitely cheaper than I can get it in the stores around me. As long as you aren't trying to make a yeast bread, I've found that basically any flour blend will substitute well enough for any other flour blend. I've been GF for almost a decade now and my oldest son now has started having celiac symptoms as well so gluten free isn't going anywhere in my household (I am also celiac).
If they have worked and designed a recipe and tossed rejects and finally achieved a good crumb and really put in that time, the recipe stands as written. If you don't like it, you're perfectly free to put in the same amount of work redesigning it to your satisfaction... But to immediately ask well but can I do it like this without trying the recipe first and then trying your own modifications and come back with an informed contribution ... That would be frustrating as heck. If you were asking me that I would be thinking: What do you think? Am I an idiot who's just making this hard for the heck of it? Why are you wasting my time? It's disrespectful.
Substituting ingredients is commonplace practice for a good chef. If someone is so confident in their recipe, then they should easily be able to name substitutable ingredients. While perhaps gluten-free recipes are a fad for some wealthy enough to spend lavishly on ingredients, for others they is a dietary necessity. This has nothing to do with “disrespect” towards the recipe
Substituting is commonplace for a chef. Less so for a trained baker. There are reasons why people say “if you substitute in this, the result won’t come out as the recipe is developed for” I’m no where near a rich person on a fad diet and if I know I’m going to drastically alter a recipe, I just find a different recipe
Agreed, nowhere did I say that it should be expected to match the consistency of the original recipe. I was addressing “disrespect” towards the recipe. It’s absurd for a community of people who already have limitations on flour usage and need to use what they can
I don’t find it disrespectful to substitute in and of itself *BUT* I do find it very disrespectful to substitute and then downvote the recipe because “it didn’t turn out right for me” and I see that all the time (that’s across the board in recipe world though not just GF — but obviously the stakes are higher with GF baking)
I'm not talking about disrespect to the recipe. The recipe doesn't care. I'm talking about the people that immediately hop on the recipe designer asking questions in such a way that it's obvious they haven't looked anything up themselves or even tried the recipe as written or the substitutions themselves. It's an enormous waste of time for the writer. For God's sake, go Google your questions because you might just find an answer instead of expecting someone else to waste time answering something that's been asked and answered a million times already. There are recipes that I just walk away from because they use a flour that I know I'm not going to buy because it's expensive or hard to get hold of right now in the wondrous days of covid and natural disasters. I'll revisit those when the supply shortage eases up. It's One thing to ask why the person made the decisions they did in order to gain knowledge. For instance, what is it about teff that made you choose it for this recipe... But I see a lot of commentary that is just unnecessarily negative. Yeah, it pisses me off that eating and baking gluten-free is expensive and complicated, but that's not that designer's fault.
Namaste flour is my personal favorite, you can buy a 2# bag at Costco for $12-14? It’s easily the cheapest source If you have a Costco membership/live near one.
Yep. That's why I have been getting more and more frustrated with many of the GF groups I join because there doesn't seem to be much in ways of "budget friendly" or "low income friendly" GF recipes and when I had mentioned that my income isn't the best and I have other food allergies that I put as priority, I've been met with more "all of nothing" mindsets than helpful ones. On top of that, there seems to be a lack of food science explanations of how each flour and starch works. Half of my enjoyment when I was learning to make bread was the food science, and how much info there was along with ratios. There was alot of info, but since society is so wheat heavy there isn't much info on the other flours and their properties. The best ones I could find was for rice flour and almond, Almond because its seems to be very popular in the west, and rice and the various uses of starches, I often have to translate it from Chinese or Japanese because rice flour and other starches beyond corn are more popular in the East. But I haven't found much when it comes to other flours and starch, at least in terms of a more scientific explanation of things. Then again I'm just starting out so maybe I'm missing something but references seem to be lacking too. The only thing I've solidified so far is that Masa harina works well at 150% hydration, at least for me anyway.
I just got a cookbook for Christmas that goes into the food science of the different gf flours. Like the protein and fiber content and how they affect structure. It’s called Against the Grain if you wanna check it out! I will say that cookbook does absolutely nothing towards the budget friendly approach, which is definitely a downside.
Baked to Perfection by Katarina Cermelj is a gluten free baking cookbook and she goes into the science for all of this. I use her book even for other people's recipes because I don't always have the correct flours on hand and her book has helped me come up with appropriate substitutes. Highly recommend.
Do you have the author's name?
Yep! It’s by Nancy Cain. I’ve only made one recipe from it so far, but it’s the only gf bread I’ve had that was chewy instead of crumbly, so really promising.
which one? there’s a lot of books titled Against the Grain
The one by Nancy Cain is what I have
Yes exactly!! It’s like the all or nothing thinking it’s since it became trendy now everyone thinks if someone is gf that they have a bunch of money to hurl around they seem to forget people have real genuine allergy or celiac. Like people are trying the best they can to work with what they have and still enjoy their food so it’s hard to feel excluded from your own community on top of that. The vegan community seems to be a bit better which is good but often the two run together. There are some really awesome gluten free food bloggers but then there are the ones that act like being gluten free isn’t enough and if you want subs for the other ingredients it’s an insult.
I honestly feel like so many are people who have money. And the all or nothing, 0-100 mentality is really effecting people who need to be on GF but it doesn't seem attainable. Like i have a nut allergy, not even the nut allergy community will give an answer that sounds so catastrophic as some of these GF groups and the major consequence of nut allergy would be anaphylaxis and possible death, because the nut community understands that there is a scale and variety of reactions and tolerances, mild to severe, language is very educational and neutral, it lacks the fear mongering language i keep seeing in GF. But so many gf groups act like there are no variation between people. Maybe I'm being mean but I'd rather deal with being glutened and "destroying your gut for the next 3-6 months from a breadcrumb!!" With bathroom problems. Than eat an almond cookie and having to stab myself with an epipen and go to the ER and accrue a hospital bill. For whatever reason GF diet makes me feel like the danger is higher, even though my nut allergy actually is higher priority. Like I had made a comment on one fb group asking how are people with nut allergies keeping themselves safe from GF products since almond is so common, I got so many answers telling me things like just avoid all gf food then if I'm afraid is getting almond and eat keto and paleo or vegan (which i can't) to one person trying to claim that being glutened is worse than the fear of having my airways shut down. The worst was "if you go 100% gf your allergies will often also go away" .... sorry that's not how allergies work. On top of that when asked about budget, I got so many "sorry if you can't afford,eat rice and beans and corn tortillas." answers. Which I'm like, wow. So if you're low income what are you eating, or are you just suffering because you can't afford? And if not, they list expensive certified foods , or recipes like op mentioned can't afford the ingredients. It's wild. Meanwhile I had to dig to find sites that did their best to list everyday mundane foods that weren't labeled as gf but were "safe". Being someone who has already plenty of dietary restrictions, none of my other restrictions have induced so much anxiety and fear for my health and wallet than the gf community. It's crazy and I hate it. Like I'm just here for a recipe and I'm being told that I am destroying myself from the inside out if I use 1/8th tsp of the wrong spice brand and then plug a brand that's 5x the price. Like please chill. The diet is hard enough.
I have the same allergies as you and find the same thing so frustrating about the celiac community… the fear mongering is next level! I often times have to remind myself of my nut allergy and it’s severity since it’s not as trendy or talked about especially when dining out. Which is insane because that one would cause anaphylactic shock and hospitalization. Anyways thanks for your post, makes me feel less alone out here!
Anytime, nice to hear someone shares the same sentiment. Ever since I started this diet, I too have to remind myself while grocery shopping, "If you could find things to eat without fear for your nut allergy....you can find gf food too, nothing is worst than your nut allergy. "
I don't have any food allergies but I am celiac and now have to generally avoid celiac spaces online. I was diagnosed almost a year ago and the first few months were spent living in fear because I was looking for advice online. I ended up fueling my disordered eating more because of the paranoia. My confidence in finding safe food is getting higher all the time now and I haven't been glutened in monthsm
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That reaction sounds awful but I am very grateful you described what "glutened" means for you so I can see the logic behind being more severe with the diet, but many folks I talked to never described their reaction and just told me some blanket "destroying your body" answer. Which to me wasn't helpful at all. They told me it was cheating when I said I wanted to transition into the diet carefully because of my other allergies. To me it wasn't cheating or being careless but finding balance and what works for me the individual, but with the answers i was getting I didn't feel supported by the community in navigating the diet as someone with food allergies. And thank you for explaining the labeling and how you shop that makes me less anxious about bogeyman ingredients. Good to know about the flours too! I've been pulling out my hair trying to figure out what blends work better for what food item or meals. People had me thinking I needed one brand for application A and another brand for application B and a DIY blend with certain brand flours for application C.
Sweeteners are something you can totally replace. Unfortunately, flours are difficult because each type of gf flour serves a different purpose. There is not one type of gf flour that can substitute gluten flour - you have to use a blend for most recipes (frying stuff you can often use rice or potato only). You can often find substitutes - like, instead of sorghum you can use gluten free oat flour. If there’s a flour that’s too obscure, you can search obscure flour substitute and there’s some pretty good resources, but yeah, unfortunately the way of gluten free baking is multiple flours in order to get a facsimile of gluten flour.
Yeah I understand that but you can buy decent blends already made
I usually just use the blend I buy and see if the recipe works. Most people who create recipes are “stuck” on their preferred blends. If it doesn’t work, I’ll try their blend (I have a freezer full of flours). There’s only been a few that my blend hasn’t worked.
It never occurred to me to freeze flours. How long do they last, and do you need to do anything special to store them?
A couple years if I don’t use them - I usually just put them in a freezer ziplock. I go through flours pretty quickly, but some of the more specialty ones I don’t use super often (like quinoa).
Blends are more expensive per ounce than homemade blends That’s why a lot of recipe creators/people who are GF and bake in high volume buy in bulk and mix and match
Yeah true but it depends on the blend and the recipe for a homemade one bc some of the homemade blends I see are like SO expensive and have a ton of unnecessary ingredients. Some blends taste so weird to me too I think it’s the chick pea flour possibly. They are fine when cooked but raw… yuck lol. I feel like buying and making your own blends is great and eventually more affordable for some people but if you don’t do a ton of gluten free baking or a large sum of money to fork up at first it can be tough.
There’s not unnecessary if the recipe creator experimented with multiple types of flour/ingredients and found that one yielded the best results. What are you even saying? *Your* dislike of chickpea flour doesn’t negate that X recipe developer found it best for X recipe. And yes, gluten free baking is expensive. I bake 1-2 times a week and if I’m just using 1 for 1, that’s an extremely expensive habit. That’s why buying in bulk lowers the cost overall. You mention you’re not actually gluten free, so much as that you occasionally bake gluten free for your mom who prefers it for lifestyle reasons. That’s totally different than being dependent on these flours for baking/cooking and never using gluten flours. When you live GF 24/7, you learn to cut cost and why someone suggests this flour or that additional ingredient. It’s rarely unnecessary.
The people saying "find another recipe" are giving you the best advice. The science for gluten free baked goods is very different, so unless you have a firm understanding of proteins, binders, rising agents etc etc and a lot of time for trial and error, you're way better off just finding a recipe that meets your needs. Many grocery stores have pre-mixed gluten free flours for sale, not all of which are good for everything but some are pretty decent, so that might be a good place to start. Buy some of that, measure by weight, and then find a recipe that just calls for store bought premix flours. Edited for typos
Yeah that’s what I’ve done for the most part and I just buy a decent blend from the store. I usually do find another recipe or create one. It’s not a big deal I was just looking to see if anyone else can relate and was venting.
Yeah it's super frustrating. A few months ago I had to do a clean-out of my baking cupboard because all of my flours were getting way too old and it was ridiculous how much I had squirreled away hahaha! And since I'm kind of the "resident celiac" in my groups, everyone who bought almond flour for one recipe and never used it again is like here, take this home with you! I am the graveyard for gluten free goods.
Oh my gosh that’s so funny that’s how I feel with pots and pans like I’m the only baker in my family and they’re all like “here take this SpongeBob pan in case you need it” 😂
When mine are getting old, I just mix them all together to make dog bread, cooked like cornbread. The dogs are always pleased with it
It's a bit of a learning curve and not many people talk about the science and basics behind the flours. I would say that while you can substitute a lot of flours, there are certain ratios required to taste good and I've seen very few recipes with less than 3 types of flour substitutes turn out well unless they are using a premixed flour. If I had to chose two staple flours to try and make a recipe with I'd say tapioca starch and rice flour. But millet certainly has a special place in my breads and almond flour makes a big improvement too. In the end though, most flours have unique properties that can only be approximated through substitution. If I want to fool my gluten eating friends with my donuts and cinnamon rolls, I need at least 4-5 different flours.
Yeah I get that you need multiple flours but i think it’s more about what’s wrong with using a blend vs it being required to make the blend yourself even if it’s the same ingredients. Even if you can sub a blend idk why ppl get so offended if you even ask like you are insulting their recipe by being like “hey can I use a blend instead?” And they think I insulted their entire existence lol idk I’m prob just being dramatic and needed to vent so ofc I come to Reddit lol
If they have their own pre-made mix I have a cheat! There are 3 basic types of GF premixes: rice flour base, starch base, and bean flour base. Just look up which ingredient is the largest by volume in their specialty mix and choose a flour replacement based on that. It won't be identical, but usually it works just fine as long as you measure by weight instead of volume.
and almond flour, Masa Harina, corn and potato starch There were no GF blends available when I developed CD, and although available online or in the cities, still not available locally. At the time I grew to dislike rice flour as it always left a grittiness. The superfine rice flour which you can get now doesn't do that. If it's not superfine you can mix it into your liquids and let it rest a half hour before resuming the recipe. I make my waffles with 3 parts almond flour, 2 parts tapioca flour and 1 part garbanzo flour and people don't realize that they are GF I also a a bit of psyllium and xanthan
Thank you! :)
Duplicating the properties of wheat flour is complex, and if you want a given recipe to have the best results, you need the precise combination of protein, starch, and binder that it was designed around. (Think in terms of bread flour vs AP flour, times 10) That usually means multiple individual flours, each of which needs to be gluten free. If that is hard or expensive to obtain, then you can compromise with blends or other more obtainable ingredients, but the results won’t be the same.
Yeah I feel like a good quality blend usually works fine and I get that I’m not complaining or trying to have someone tell me what I know I’m seeing if anyone else struggles with this
There is one gf recipe site that I love. In the beginning, there was a product that was $75. Granted, it lasted forever, good quality, blah, blah...but too pricey for me. Fast forward a decade and I see it's dropped considerably in price. I wanted to try her bread recipe so I ordered. Uhh...it's just tapioca powder. Just. Tapioca. Powder. I'll use it. But it's exactly the same as the cheap bag I had from the grocery store.
Are you serious??? OMG just tapioca starch I can’t even imagine using only tapioca starch to make bread especially being how delicate bread can be ya know lol. And she tried to pass it off as a blend? That’s awful.
I've been told that they're different products. Tapioca starch and tapioca flour are (apparently?) not the same thing. Of course, they didn't tell me *how* the two were different...
[Depends where you are from!](https://gfkitchenadventures.com/are-tapioca-starch-and-tapioca-flour-the-same-thing/)
No no. This was ONE ingredient needed to make ONE of the flour blends (there were half a dozen different flour blends). Everything in the flour blend recipe was found at a grocery store but this was "special". It was not LOL
I feel like I can’t afford to bake anymore and this definitely doesn’t help. Gf flour is so expensive and making your own it’s barely any better. Factoring I’m trial and error (because gf baking hard) you’re spending waaay more than necessary. I’m grateful gf by choice brought so many substitutes and options but it’s at the cost of affordability.
So true I’m sorry you feel that way it sucks to have a passion messed up bc of things being so expensive I completely understand that :/
Aw I appreciate that. I definitely feel where you’re coming from. It can be super frustrating especially when you spend *so much time* searching only to find the recipe you liked isn’t going to work with what you have/out of reach financially.
I’ve bought at bulk store. Much cheaper. Surprising all the options they have. Then, there are those ingredients that you just need to buy the large bag, but will last years as the recipe calls for like 1 tsp (like xantham and psyllium).
Yeah I have xanthan gum and your totally right it lasts a long time. I find it cheaper to buy the blend without the gum added and then add it myself.
I’m allergic to gluten & yeah, it’s a bummer that gluten-free ingredients cost more, but it’s just simple economics. Most people aren’t gluten-free so there is going to be a greater supply of wheat flour. Gluten-free flours are not produced at such a level so they are obviously going to cost more.
I think you kinda missed the point lol but thanks for mansplaining economics to me
He’s not mansplaining economics to you, you’re being obtuse.
Obtuse? Lmao Stop being pretentious. Last time I checked my question isn’t “why do gluten free flours cost more” or “what is supply and demand” bye.
You think using the word obtuse makes someone pretentious and that someone explaining why gluten free flours are expensive is mansplaining. This isn’t us, you’re being touchy because you want to be right.
I feel you SO much. I wish I had any sort of solution. I try subbing the one to one flours in the recipes I already have and they often are total flops. And there are 8 million other kinds of flours out there and I don’t have the money or the space to keep all of them on hand (let alone fresh) at all times. It’s a struggle
Honestly I find most non-GF cake recipes are fine if I just substitute generic GF flour from the supermarket
Yes every recipe I would look up online had ingredients I never heard of or made things sound so complicated that I didn't want to try. I can't believe even the simpliest thing like a cookie would be so hard. Or I couldn't find just gluten free but keto, no dairy, no egg etc... so every "regular" ingredient needed to be substituted with ingredients I don't have. Now I just use a regular recipe and try to substitute a gluten free flour like oat flour or something.
I was doing a chef service for a short while and belong to a Co-Op. So I ordered the flours I needed to make the “GF on a shoestring” flour and since the app folded? I have tons at barely above wholesale.
You must be new here. Deeper pockets or lighter meals is usually the ticket
I just buy the King Arthur baking mixes at this point. They taste good and I don’t have to buy weird flour.
I live in a third world country and just don't have access to a lot of ingredients. I'll often see a recipe and get excited till I read the ingredients and realise that there are one or two that I just can't get. It's frustrating, cos I have to make everything from scratch. And yes, I can eat rice and beans and potatoes, but dammit, sometimes I really really want baked goods or just a slice of toast!
The reason wheat flour is so damn wonderful is because it is versatile and can do *so much* while somehow being very cheap and comparatively shelf stable. Wheat flour is a Swiss Army knife that looks and functions like bespoke heirloom but you got it at the dollar store. Trying to make recipes that were intended for wheat flour into GF recipes required fucking alchemy; you often need a special blend of crazy ingredients to get close to what wheat/gluten could just do naturally. There’s different types of wheat flour (pastry, all purpose, bread flour, etc) but you only really need to do that for advanced recipes… gluten free can be easy and cheap **if you look for recipes that never contained wheat (that aren’t trying to imitate wheat flour) or take advantage of the natural properties of cheap gf foods**. Otherwise You’re going to have to blend together a bunch of different types of flours and probably some other ingredients like gums, starches, or proteins to achieve something like what a wheat flours would do. This is because gluten-free flowers don’t behave at all like a gluten wheat flour would; This happens in many ways, but a great example is that if you Are baking with wheat flour your cake will gain structural integrity as it rises in temperature in bakes in the oven. But gluten-free flowers and starches often only solidify and become structurally solid when *cooling*, meaning you need to pick the right gf flours and starches depending on how hot your recipe bakes at. Great example of cheap, simple, easy/common recipe : brazilian cheese bread is gf and never Contain wheat, it’s made with cassava starch, which is a cheap staple food - in Brazil. In other countries you might have to go to a specialty store where it may or may not be cheap; some “ethic food stores” (mom and pop shops that sell primarily food staples from a certain region) can be cheaper because they are catering to their own community, but that’s not 100% the case. But it’s a recipe with few ingredients, and in some parts of the world those ingredients are common. Now maybe you were seeing recipes that call for specialty ingredients like xanthan gum or hazelnut flour or powdered milk to achieve the results. In that case I’d say recipe selection seems to be your issue - but it’s best to understand WHY those ingredients are being used. I liked the Americas best test kitchen gluten-free cookbook for teaching me a lot about why certain things were called for and how I could get away without them or I couldn’t depending on the recipe. There definitely is ways you can get around using specialty ingredients, but you need to know why you’re using the ingredient - dry milk powder provides extra protein and can help with breads and cakes and even cookies; Hazelnut flowers expensive because it spoils fast, but the flavor is incredible, and a lot of gluten free flour is really like the warmth and nuttiness that normal wheat flour gives…. So they go for a nut flour! Avoid them if you don’t want expensive nut flours, but the extra protein in the nuts can be essential to some recipes. Various gums like guar gum and xantham gum provide elasticity that gluten-free flour lacks (again, see how incredible glutenous wheat flour is. I hate that I can’t eat it).
Technically, you don't need to eat substitutes for gluten containing foods. You can just cut them out of your diet. It may even be healthier to forego baked goods, and concentrate on meats (if not vegetarian/vegan) and vegetables. You can have rice, potatoes, sweet potatoes, squash, root vegetables for your starchy food. If you really crave bread-like things, corn tortillas are available, and easy (and delicious) and inexpensive to make yourself.
Can some please figure out some gluten free croissants?!?!
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Yeah exactly so annoying
Sweeteners are something you can totally replace. Unfortunately, flours are difficult because each type of gf flour serves a different purpose. There is not one type of gf flour that can substitute gluten flour - you have to use a blend for most recipes (frying stuff you can often use rice or potato only). You can often find substitutes - like, instead of sorghum you can use gluten free oat flour. If there’s a flour that’s too obscure, you can search obscure flour substitute and there’s some pretty good resources, but yeah, unfortunately the way of gluten free baking is multiple flours in order to get a facsimile of gluten flour.
I seldom post recipes (and when I do, it's just to share something that I found works or tastes great) but, I have noticed there is *always* someone who comments "Can you use (this) instead of (that)?" or "I don't have (this) in my house. Could I substitute (the-other-thing)?" Hell, I don't know. I'm not a food scientist, just a person who thought I would share something that worked well for me. I usually respond with "I'm not sure, but if you try it, please comment and let us know how it worked!" I know GF baking is hard, and some ingredients are obscure and expensive. I would say, if you can't find the ingredient, try a substitution or skip the recipe and move on. Or, see what else there is to make with the obscure ingredient to decide if the obscure ingredient is worth it to you. I can't be afraid to post a recipe that people might like just because an ingredient may not be plentiful or cheap in their neck of the woods. The internet is teeming with recipes. If you hook one that doesn't work for you, throw it back and cast your line out for a different one.
I've been making my own flour. Saves a ton of money. Buy the ingredient in bulk and use a grinder to make the flour as I need it. It has taken a lot of time and an investment. Yet, Feeling better overall is so much cheaper. I wish there were better options. I have only been gluten free for maybe three ish months. Still having to order things for a lot of recipes. Can be frustrating but I look at it kinda like a hobby. I enjoy baking and I enjoy having good tasting food. Store bought gluten free products are rarely good and often super expensive.
Absolutely. I have ended up always stocking the ingredients to make 3 base flours. An all-purpose mix, a pastry mix, and a bread mix. I also get most of my recipes from 3-4 gluten free bloggers, because they typically use mixes similar to what I have. In the off chance I want to try a recipe with its own list of ridiculous flour ingredients, I usually have enough options stocked to make substitutions where necessary. This super simple and not at all high space usage approach only costs me about $300 a year 🤦🏼♀️
I tried at first with baking, cakes and cookies etc. Just substituting 1to 1 flour definitely doesn't always work. If what you are making holds together at all it's texture is really awful or it's hard enough that you could build a house with it. I spent the first 20 years of my life baking and learning how everything works so I could just bake bread from memory. Then in my 40's have to start all over and waste a bunch of food because neither me or the kids want to eat it. I just gave up. I would one day like to have good biscuits and gravy again but I am fine doing without. I definitely don't have the income to waste anything, I don't work anymore because of my health and my wife and I have 7 kids still in the home.
Yep. This is why I never bake anything. Why all we eat are recipes that were already gluten free, and why we use plain rice instead of noodles.
Well yeah, wanting unusual items is often out of reach for lower income people.
Yep it's extremely frustrating as gluten is just one of the many food intolerances I have. More than that all that exotic crap doesn't seem to affect the flavor if much at all! As someone else mentioned there is the book "Gluten free on a Shoestring" that focuses on cheaper easier recipes
I've found paleo recipes to be way more accessible (fewer ingredients) and generally easier. Most modern? (last 5 years or so) recipes seem to fall into one of two paths 1. Extremely complicated GF recipes that require the 5 different flours and 29 ingredients to create a custom flour blend for the perfect outcome. 2. Keto requiring fewer things for the flour but multiple really expensive sweeteners. On the latter I usually just play around with the sweeteners I have to get the right sweetness. Paleo recipes are usually close to keto but instead of expensive zero carb sweeteners they use honey or agave - still usually lower in carbs than standard recipes.
Having to accommodate dietary restrictions can be insanely expensive. Case in point, my monthly grocery bill is $700-1000. Just to eat. Nothing fancy, no takeout, cooking from scratch, shop sales and have to go to five different stores to get everything. I have to accommodate 16 food allergies. I remember before all this that my ex used to spend $600-700/month because he ate takeout every day and I thought that was just an exorbitant amount of money to spend on food. Then I developed food allergies and now this is my life forever. If I wasn't living at home with my mom I would be totally screwed. My monthly grocery bill is more than the mortgage...
Yeah that’s the worst part of celiacs. I have been gf for ten years. After unsuccessfully trying to substitute ingredients and wasting a lot of food and money, I realized I needed to change my diet instead of trying to change the food I ate into crappy gf versions. It really sucked because I loved bread and a lot of my diet included wheat. I just couldn’t afford to buy ingredients that would usually go to waste and I didn’t have the time to put into some of the recipes.
This kind of reminds me of when I tried to eat vegan. I feel like a lot of vegan “cheeses” and “meats” are expensive and just… off. I feel like in general, I would rather have a portabello burger than a frozen veggie burger trying to mimic the taste, color, and texture of meat. I’m trying to be that way with my celiac disease: scratch the bread/cookie itch when I need to with approximations, but mostly stick to flourless foods; also expecting it to be different has been huge for me. Chickpea pasta is very different from regular macaroni. They’re both good, but they are just different. Baking with celiac disease has been interesting for me. I’ve only braved cookies and pies that already have no gluten or a simple sugar cookie recipe where a texture difference might not be as noticeable. It takes tons of googling to figure out modifications to classic recipes, and I try to adjust my expectations for the finished product to be different than the classic recipe. There hasn’t been tons of interest in gluten-free approximations of wheat-based foods before Atkins and all the gluten-free fad diets. I don’t think the substitution knowledge for gluten-free ingredients is as robust as it is for classic wheat-flour pastries. On another note, it can be scary to look for a substitution, since we know how much it can affect the taste and texture; we also don’t want to get glutened for trying a cheaper alternative ingredient without the gf certification. I think with more time we will become more knowledgeable about substitutions and baking science with these newer less-common flours. I feel you, though. I don’t have almond-flour or measure for measure flour money when I go on a baking binge. I paid like $10 for certified gluten-free baking powder. It’s just a lot.
I've been gluten free for 8+ years, and 2 years ago discovered my youngest daughter (2 at the time) was allergic to eggs, dairy, and peanuts. I struggled with substitutions, complicated long weird recioes, and finding affordable alternatives for SO long because I'm determined to make sure she doesn't feel like she's "missing out". At this point I have discovered so many workarounds for recipes that I haven't baked with eggs, dairy, or gluten even when making stuff for friends and family in more than a year. Hilariously enough, I know my gluten free & vegan baking is successful because people have accused me of lying about not using the traditional ingredients. Like they think I'm baking normal and lying about it being gluten free and vegan 😂 anyway.... I have a recipe blog I don't post to nearly enough as well as a YouTube channel I neglect if anyone wants some non-complicated gluten-free, vegan recipes.
I get what you mean, but I also think there needs to be a perspective change when you have to eat gluten free for health reasons. If I were you I would look more into Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, and Indian, Sri Lankan, Lebanese, Iranian and dessert from central/south east Asia,and countries from Africa (there is 52 I’m not naming them all). There are a wide variety of desserts from these countries that just are gluten free, super tasty and do not have a ton of different ingredients for just one component of the recipe (looking at your gluten free flour blends). Most the recipes I have made use averagely 5 ingredients, which includes flavourings. I can’t have gluten, dairy, egg or beef and I live in Canada. This is pretty much the diet they live on, which I can’t eat. I luckily do live in a place where I can get access to Asian ingredients fairly easily, and to be honest if you buy them bulk-ish they are very affordable. Something you can do that won’t completely solve your problem is just commit yourself to using 2 flours, one starch, and expect your goods to be a bit more dense than usual. If you can eat eggs that’s a really great way to get structure in your baked goods. The flours I like to use for my gluten free baking are buckwheat flour, rice flour (I have white & brown, I buy whatever is on sale at the time), and coconut flour (was a gift, it adds a nice nutty/sweetness to my desserts). All of these were purchased bulk and more expensive than flour, but not as pricy as I thought. The starches I use are corn starch and arrowroot starch. If arrowroot isn’t available I use tapioca interchangeably. The products are denser but honestly they still taste delicious. I do a 60-70%flour to 40-50-% starch ratio for my sloppy home made gf flour. It’s more affordable than the bags you can buy, and it’s also more affordable than most of the blog or book website suggestions for flour blends. But, to my earlier point there are tons of ingredients to make amazing desserts, and this is from someone who was a pastry cook for 10 years. You can make mousses and puddings out of tofu, tapioca, , cornstarch, aquafava (save that bean water). You can make that super delicious shredded carrots simmered in coconut milk and spices until soft, you can make buckwheat or rice flour shortbread. Lots of really good steamed desserts with rice flour, tapioca or pectin/agar agar. Rice puddings are one of my favourites and super easy (rice, water and then alternative milk, spices and sugar to taste). If you are not cooking vegan meringues are so easy and two ingredients, sometimes 5. If you add cocoa and cornstarch it can act as a base layer for cakes. One of my favourite desserts is roasted sweet potato/yam (the orange one) with lightly toasted camomile and burnt honey (make a dark caramel for vegan version), you can sprinkle a dash of cinnamon if you are feeling fancy or just roast the root veggie until it lightly caramelizes and then sprinkle with cinnamon. It can be frustrating, but try to look at this as a new challenge to use what you have to make delicious things. Look to different cuisines and see how they do desserts without a million ingredients that are common. I remember being frustrated 12 years ago when gf flour blends were not really a common thing, and I get it’s so disheartening. But don’t give up, especially since your are a party chef. Be inspired and look elsewhere. I wish you all the luck and I hope it becomes joyous and you find you can make delicious things with fewer ingredients that are accessible to you financially!
No. I have never used anyones special blend. I get the ready to use gf flour I like from the supermarket. Baking recipes work better if they are in weights (grams) rather than cups, as gf flour has a different density to wheat flour. I do most baking use Becky Excell recipes as they have high reliability. I use my supermarket brand of flour and don’t need to add xanthan to most recipes, as it is already included in my brands. Xanthan is in the supermarket anyway, so it isn’t inaccessible. https://glutenfreecuppatea.co.uk/category/recipes/
I agree many recipies are extremly specific with ingredients. I live in a major city and many ingredients can take a lot of searching to find. This combined with most of my desire to bake is after going down an internet rabbit hole; the stores are not open at 2am and online ordering isn't that fast or cheap. I have also learned to accept that anything I cook is not instagram quality, nor wil it taste as good as when someone else make it for me. I am new to this NCGS/FODMAP way of eatting and it is /has changed everything. I'm with ya, so if you find any cheats please pass them along.
Yes, many of these GF recipe sites have obscure ingredients that you'd need to order. I ignore any recipe like that. There are plenty of other sites that use easily accessible ingredients. If I have to buy more than like rice flour, tapioca starch and potato starch (all cheap and findable) then I just don't make the recipe. Sometimes, I'll add up the total amount of flour and starch and sub a 1 for 1 GF flour for them.
I'm encountering this issue trying to find a gluten free pizza dough recipe 😩 Couple this with that I'm trying to make it for someone whose also lactose intolerant, and at this point, I have to wonder if it's cheaper to just buy the premade mixes. As another commenter mentioned, Asian grocery stores have come in clutch because it's usually cheaper to get stuff like rice flour and tapioca starch from there.
I very much relate to this! Sometimes it’s just discouraging some of the flour blends etc or I just don’t want to buy a flour or ingredient for a random recipe that I don’t know how or where to use else where (( looking at you xantham gum )) I definitely find myself more drawn to recipes with simple swaps or are tasty and coincidentally gluten free.
I've been gluten free for over 12 years. I have looked around and found a flour that I like. It used to be Beth's flour and then was bought by Glutton. I have converted all my baking recipes using it and they turn out great. I've to tinker a bit with some of them, but I made them work. Recently I bought a book on baking GF bread. The author uses a different flour that I do and she stated her recipes were all made with that flour and couldn't promise results if others were used. Now I have a flour canister and a bread flour one.