A note about gluten-free flour

Since I decided to cut my gluten intake the last year or so, I have been experimenting with different gluten-free flours for baking, and I can unequivocally state that I love brown rice flour and oat flour.  They seem to work for just about everything.  Rice flour is very similar to wheat in end product texture, while oat turns out a crispier result, making it perfect for cookies.  I often go half and half with rice and oat, and the flavor does not seem to suffer in the least, though I do find it better if I add a little extra sweetener when I use them (as opposed to wheat).  When it comes to breads, fava & garbanzo bean flour is an okay substitute for flavor, but the bread will be heavy and seems to take about twice as long to bake all the way through.  It doesn’t work for cookies well at all; it’s far too heavy and dry.  So all in all, I prefer to skip the fava flour in favor of one of the others.

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