The Ultimate Gluten-Free Flour Guide

This gluten-free flour guide is my pride and joy! It has been months in the making, just reading and compiling information daily. I don't think it will ever be fully finished, as anytime I learn something new (which is all the time), I want to update this chart! However, it's good-pretty-and-compact enough to take the honor spot on my fridge door, right next to my toddler's "I <3 Mamma" doodles. So that's high praise!

So here's the chart my friends! Peruse at your leisure, and keep reading below for category break down, and also how to use the chart.

I have explored twenty-seven gluten-free flours... there are SO many more I didn't get to, like cashew flour or apple flour, but I have to start somewhere. On the left side, you will see I broke down and color-coded the flours based on what kind of plant they come from, from grains to legumes. I also included wheat flour as a comparison. Now let's look at the data categories.

Water Absorption

I have an entire post about water absorption; how we measure it, and what it means in terms of baking. Give that a quick read if you're unfamiliar with the concept, it's worth it! The letter rankings are self-explanatory: low, medium-low, medium, medium-high and high.

You'll notice that I gave the starches a "ranking" of NNF, which translates to Non-Newtonian Fluid. My physicist hubby explained the phenomenon to me and I quote "the viscosity increases as the stress increases." Check it out!

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The mixture is liquid if you pour it in another container, but it's solid if you touch it. Well that's a Non-Newtonian Fluid, and it makes it pretty tricky for me to measure water absorption! It doesn't mean that starches do not absorb water, on the contrary! It's when the starch-water mixture is heated that gelatinization occurs, which we can think of as our baked good's structure being stabilized.

Carbohydrates

Carbs can be sugars, starches, fiber. I simply got this number on my flour's nutritional labels. I had to do a bit of math, since most of these numbers were expressed in grams, and each flour had a different serving size. We can see some patterns here, like grains contain more carbohydrates than nuts, in general.

Amylose/Amylopectin

Starch is composed of two polysaccharides, you guessed it, amylose (linear) and amylopectin (highly branched). I included these in my table because their distribution in starch affects baking. Amylose coils in water but amylopectin is insoluble. If you check out this interesting read on polysaccharides, you'll find their chemical structure. On heating, starches gelatinize, which for baked goods equates structure. However, as baked goods cool, the starch molecules undergo retrogradation, or structural loss and staling. You can geek out about amylose/amylopectin here. I am positive that there is a multitude of articles I need to read to better understand amylose/amylopectin starch composition and their effects on baking. But for now, this is the key takeaway: high amylose starches (like corn) form the most stable gels, which translates into crispiness in baking.

• TLDR: high-amylose = crispy crust!

You will notice that in my table, amylose % + amylopectin % = 100%, because that's the two components of starch. I also want to note that these % were varied in the sources I utilized, depending on brand, type of flour/starch etc. And so I took an average those values. I also want to point out that for coconut flour, the value is NA because it does not contain starch. And you will see flours with no value (-) because I could not find the information, and I also suspect these flours have very little starch. Voila!

Fiber, Fat, Protein & Calories

These are all self-explanatory. Just like the carbohydrate section, I simply did a little math to express all these values as percentage. You can also think about it as grams of fiber in 100 grams of flour. "Translating" all these values from the nutrition section of the flour label to a 100 grams portion size makes it easier to compare all the flours.

Cost

Finally, I calculated the cost per 100 grams of flour. Note that prices were compared in October 2023. Obviously your prices will be different depending on your location, brand of flour, and whether you buy in bulk. I encourage you to shop around for best prices! I find it helpful though to be able to get an estimate at quick glance for flour costs. I'm sure it would be delicious, but baking a bread with hazelnut, lupin and quinoa might be out of my budget!

Actually Using the Guide

Throughout the blog, you will find recipe blueprints that call for things like "high water absorption flour" or "high amylose flour" or "low protein flour". That's when you come to this gluten-free flour guide and figure out what would work for YOU. It might differ based on what's available and your dietary needs. Maybe you're looking at a recipe that requires sorghum, but your only available choices are millet and oat. Based on this guide, you should choose... millet: they have similar water absorption capacity and amylose content.

And so this resource I have created always guides my decisions when choosing flours to create recipes, or to modify recipes for my cottage bakery's customers. I hope this gluten-free flour guide also helps your baking! Quick shoutout to The Coconut Mama, who also has a flour guide with more detailed information on individual flour types.

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