Virginia Real : You Don’t Bring Me Flours…

February 27, 2014

I am down to my last cup of gluten-free flour so, Charming and I are making a new batch today. My basic flour recipe consists of equal parts of sweet white sorghum flour, millet flour, and white rice flour. This basic flour usually works well in any recipe that I make. It works well for baking sweet breads, sandwich bread, rolls, as a breading for fried chicken, and almost anything else that calls for gluten-free flour. Unless a recipe specifically calls for a certain type of flour, I use this as my “go to” mixture.

I purchase the gluten-free sorghum and millet flour from a store in a nearby town that sells bulk foods. I just call the store and the manager in the bulk foods section orders it on Monday and it’s ready for me to pick up on Friday. When I order the flours, I also order a 25-pound bag of gluten-free white rice, which Charming grinds for me in our electric grain mill. The mill has three settings to choose from: coarse, bread, and pastry. We usually use the pastry setting for the rice that we grind. This produces flour with a light texture and mixes well with the sorghum and millet flours.

The Wonder Mill (this is the brand name, not just something that I call it…like I call my pup, Max the Wonder Dog) that we have is really easy to use. However, Charming always likes to be in charge of the grinding operation. He believes this job is best left to him as, in my hands, it could easily turn into yet another “I Love Lucy” episode or worse, an ER episode. What can I say? The man knows my capabilities as well as my limitations. Anyway, the mill’s hopper holds about three cups of rice at a time and makes quick work of grinding the rice into flour. It took us about ten minutes to grind three pounds of rice.

After we’d ground the rice, I sat my empty flour jar in the kitchen sink (in case of accidental spills) and then alternately added half of the rice flour, half of the sorghum flour, and half of the millet flour. This fills the jar about halfway. At this point, the different layers of flour are clearly visible as the rice is white, the millet is pale yellow, and the sorghum is tan. After capping the jar and then shaking it vigorously to mix the flours, I add the rest of the flour in the same order as before. This gives me a full jar of about 15 pounds of flour. Once it’s all in the jar, I cap it again and shake until the contents are completely mixed.

Working with all of that flour got me into the mood for baking, so I baked some Iced Lemon Sheet Cake. Look for the recipe under the “Gluten-Free Recipes” tab above.