A three-ingredient, all-purpose flour mix to make your pantry complete.
I packed up my knives, spices and an apron last weekend and flew to California to cook for a group of friends – old and new – at the Rapha Women’s Team Camp. For the ladies, it was a 2.5 day riding extravaganza, complete with private roads, big climbs, misty mornings, cloudburst, family meals and lots of special surprises. For me, it was an invitation to dive deeply into the bounty of California at the very jumping off point of spring.
The opportunity to cook away from home is a special kind of game with plenty of challenges and rewards. The challenges include navigating new kitchens, special schedules, dietary restrictions, and most often the constraint of being a one-woman show, often for large groups. The rewards are incorporating a whole host of ingredients I don’t have at home (in this case, all the sweet treats of early spring in California) and showering those that gather around the dinner table with love, poured from my arms, out of the oven, and onto their plates.
On this trip, the kitchen was well-stocked and spacious, the early spring ingredients plentiful and exceptional (sweet strawberries! vibrant lemons! tiny oranges! tender lettuces!) and the schedule easy to execute. The only “challenge” was accommodating a couple of gluten-free eaters…which isn’t much of a challenge at all. In fact, I made the entire menu gluten-free all weekend and I don’t think anyone was upset. Especially because I had my Three-Ingredient Gluten-Free Flour Mix in tow.
There is nothing “wrong” with eating gluten, or wheat. In fact, there’s a lot right with eating it – especially when it comes well-sourced. Gluten challenges the digestive system, and the stickiness is often a positive factor for helping bodies on the move stay grounded. But when it’s sourced poorly (ie: from flour found at most conventional grocery stores, or wholesale distributors, outlets that don’t proudly announce their specific source) it’s more challenge than it’s worth when it comes to the digestive system.
Why? Let’s take a quick look at the digestive system and what influences it. Food influences digestion, and while occasionally eating seasonally appropriate foods that challenge digestion is healthy to build resilience in digestion, generally speaking we want to avoid overtaxing this system. Specifically because digestion is ALSO deeply influenced by stress, anxiety and the nervous system. When a nervous system is spun; because of travel, a busy day, lots of activity, movement, context shifting, or the general spinny nature of modern life, digestive fire is weakened. Our digestive systems, called “agni” in Ayurveda, are responsible for processing our thoughts, emotions AND our foods. And so when we’re already “digesting” a great deal, we don’t really want to overwhelm the system by eating more challenging to eat foods. Salads are a good example. Cold, rough, dry foods or very heavy dense foods are all examples. And so too is gluten.
Having some hearty gluten-free carbohydrate sources is a smart move for athletes, and other folx with high-fi lives on the go, with plates spinning. Instead of eating whole wheat sources or straight up bread, we can substitute in other whole grains such as amaranth, quinoa, millet, buckwheat and rice. And we can sub in gluten-free flours for wheat flour in much of what we bake with a sturdy gf flour mix…like this one.
Reducing our gluten intake isn’t hard – in fact if you’re eating whole grains it’s remarkably easy. Until, we want something baked, or we want bread. And that’s when things get a little tricky/interesting. Most of the gluten free products you can buy at the grocery store contain gums or stabilizers so they keep their shape, color and flavor, and so that they take the shape that we’ve come to expect from cakes, cookies, slices of bread etc. But these gums are gnarly on the digestive system, and typically are highly derived or ultra-processed ingredients…and we don’t really want those in our bodies.
This gluten-free flour mix contains only three ingredients, no gums or stabilizers, and yet will produce the most lovely products – you’ll never know that the gluten is gone.
Is the best 1:1 substitute for wheat flour I’ve ever found and it can literally be plugged into any recipe and used in an exact replacement, cup for cup. It only requires three ingredients – superfine brown rice flour, potato starch and tapioca flour, all of which I purchase from Anthony’s Goods. I do NOT recommend using a store-bought brown rice flour because the texture is too mealy. We want superfine!
And the process is simple! Just whisk together the ingredients, and store it.
I baked it into chocolate chip cookies, brownies and date bars at the camp, but also use it to make chapatis, cakes and so much more at home. To use it, simply replace it – by weight or by cup – for the quantity of all purpose flour in your favorite recipes.
Whether you’re stocking your super-pantry, or just making a few switches to your baking, this flour mix is a MUST MAKE.
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