How To Make Gluten-Free Food That Tastes Amazing

Commercial Gluten-Free Products

The range of gluten-free foods in the supermarkets have increased significantly in recent years which is incredible for people with coeliac disease, gluten intolerances or wheat allergies. But these gluten-free products, although good in a pinch, don’t always taste as good as their wheat counterparts and have a long way to go before they taste as good as the gluten-free foods we can make at home.

Branded goods have to keep costs down so that these products are as accessible as possible (although they are all still wildly expensive), so the flours used are chosen for economic and availability purposes. You will find a lot of ingredients lists have rice flour as a key ingredient of these products which can be a real problem in the taste and texture of gluten-free food.

I like rice flour just fine and it does have its place in my gluten-free kitchen but I don’t use it very much in my baking. It crumbles too much and often leaves a dry and gritty texture. To use rice flour it needs to be blended correctly with high protein flours or a good amount of starchy flours which these products are often lacking.

Sugar is also used a lot to paper over the cracks of these products so you’ll also find gluten-free products taste a lot sweeter than gluten-containing products. 

That’s why you’ll find that a lot of cakes, cookies, bread and pasta you buy in the gluten-free section of the supermarket tastes dry, sandy and bit like cardboard.

Does Gluten-Free Food Taste Different?

Gluten-free food doesn’t have to taste different, it is possible to achieve a neutral flavour. But if your recipe doesn’t taste as you expect it can be because of several factors:

• You are using the wrong flour in your recipe.
• You are using the wrong ratio of flours in your recipe.
• There are other adjustments you need to make in your recipe.

All-Purpose Gluten-Free Flour

An all-purpose or cup for cup gluten-free flour is actually not made from one source like regular all-purpose flour which is usually just made from wheat. All-purpose gluten-free flours are made from a combination of different ground wholegrains, starches and/or plants, nuts or legumes. As you can imagine when chickpeas are ground they do not lose their chickpea flavour. So chickpea flour tastes of chickpeas, almond flour tastes of almonds and coconut flour tastes of coconut.

Different brands of gluten-free flours will have a different mix of ingredients which make up their blend. The aim of these flours is to create the same kind of flavour neutrality that wheat flour provides but that’s not always the result, depending on their ingredients.

A recipe made with Bob’s Red Mill’s Gluten-Free All Purpose Baking Flour (which contains garbanzo bean, potato starch, tapioca flour, sorghum flour and fava bean flour) will taste very different to a recipe made with Doves Farm’s Freee Gluten-Free Plain White Flour (made with rice, potato, tapioca, maize and buckwheat flours).

What Gluten Free Flour Is Most Like Regular Flour?

I’m afraid the magic gluten-free all-purpose flour is still proving elusive. Most recipes which use branded gluten-free flour blends also advise using additional thickeners like xanthan gum or psyllium husk in the recipe to aid with binding and improving the soft and fluffy texture.

You will often find that you achieve greater success creating your own gluten-free flour blends which may suit your tastes, purposes and availability much more than branded blends. Since the budget and allergy requirements will also be tailor made to you then you could choose to add in powerhouse flours like almond flour which is very good at stabilising and adding moisture to recipes. But many brands avoid this flour due to cost and allergy issues.

You may also find that you might like to have various different gluten-free flours on hand to cover the recipes you like to make. You could have a homemade flour blend that works great in your bread recipes, one for cookies and cakes and one for cooking purpose like breading or sauces.

This may seem like I am urging you to build up a collection of a hundred different flours. But I am only highlighting the possibilities. Actually I recommend sticking to just 3-5 single origin flours is the best course of action. From this small selection you can create blends for any and all recipes you wish to make, as long as they cover all the different flour categories.

Why Does Gluten-Free Flour Taste Different? 

The reason gluten-free flour tastes different from regular flour is that it is made up of a blend of differing single origin flours.

Single origin flours are flours which are made from a singular type of grain, seed, nut or plant. As mentioned above, gluten-free flour blends are made from different mixes of these single origin flours. To make these flours easier to navigate it’s prudent to categorise these flours not only from the type of source they originate from but also their common attributes and their kinds of flavour. They can range from neutral in flavour to distinctive earthy flavours to nutty or beany flavours.

These are some popular single origin flours including their flavour profiles:

Wholegrain Flours

• Rice flour. Delicate neutral flavour.
• Oat flour. Toasted buttery flavour.
• Sorghum flour. Earthy vanilla flavour.
• Buckwheat flour. Strong earthy flavour.

Starchy Flours (also known as ‘starches’)

These flours are all relatively neutral in flavour with very delicate differences:

• Sweet rice flour (glutinous rice flour).
• Tapioca flour.
• Potato starch.
• Cassava flour.
• Cornflour (corn starch).

Nuts & Legumes

These flours are all fairly self explanatory as they taste as their original source:

• Almond flour.
• Chickpea flour (garbanzo/gram flour).
• Coconut flour.

Making Homemade Gluten-Free Flour Blends

You can choose to make your gluten-free flour blends in two different ways:

1. Create a blend on a recipe-by-recipe basis. This is how I recommend you get started with using your own gluten-free flour blends. You can tailor your blend to what you are cooking or baking. That way the blend will perfectly suit the bake and means you can enhance flavours by choosing specific flours. This is what will set your gluten-free recipes apart from generic gluten-free recipes.
2. Create your own homemade all-purpose gluten-free flour blend to be used across many recipes. Once you become more familiar with using single origin gluten-free flours then creating your own go-to gluten-free mix will be such a time saver for you. You will want to aim for a more neutral flavour in this flour blend so that it works across the board without any of your flour choices overpowering any recipe. The wrong flour within the blend might end up with your recipes all tasting very similar or contrasting heavily with the other ingredients so that the end result doesn't taste good.

Flavour Tips For Creating Your Own Blends

The beauty of creating your own gluten-free flour blends is that you can choose to mix ones that are more neutral in flavour by choosing flours which have neutral (or at the most) vanilla based flavour profiles.

Although you can research the flavour profiles of the gluten-free flours the only way to know how they taste in your recipes is to experiment with them yourself. I think rice flour tastes pretty neutral but I had a comment in our Facebook community recently by someone saying that they hated the flavour of rice flour. Tastes are always subjective.

There are bound to be flours which you simply don’t like the taste of. I am simply not keen on quinoa flour – it’s too overpowering for me. My husband doesn’t like sorghum flour (sad for him as it’s one of my favourites and features in many of my recipes). And also tastes can change. I used to avoid chickpea flour and found it very bitter. These days I find there is a place for it – particularly in savoury pie recipes – and I like it with chocolate – so I’m using it more and more.