gluten-free batter battle

Ok, I have to level with you. The gluten-free batter you've been tasting the past few weeks has been changing and evolving. This spring I have had a hard time settling on one particular mix. I loved the gf mix we had last summer, but alas, it's no longer available in stores. I called, I emailed, I asked in person, then I accepted that I'd have to learn this stuff. I'm not an exclusive gf-eater, so cooking with the picky wheat-free batters has been a learning process. Regular flour is such a fantastic flour to cook with, and I always lament its wonderful properties when cooking gf: it thickens liquid raw or cooked, it creates subtle fluffy leavening, with fat it becomes chewy, and it tastes amazing! Gluten-free flours have a difficult time matching the versatility of good old flour which is why you have to blend many of them into a mix that's both proteiny and starchy. Luckily, I had a book and a blog to help me figure it all out: Bette Hagman ("The Gluten-free Gourmet Makes Dessert") and the Gluten-free Girl.



In her book, Hagman devotes a paragraph to describe each common gf flour. She also includes a chart that provides percent carbs, protein, fat, and fiber of these flours. The next hundred pages are her recipes, which I didn't particularly need since none of them were crepes or pancakes... Washington County library has 2 copies of her book, but I do plan on photocopying these essential pages and not hogging my copy on endless renewals. You can also find this information if you look up each flour individually. But, yuck. Get the book.

I didn't use any of Hagman's mixes undoctored (the true recipe emerges when you open your cupboards, always). But I did appreciate that she included 4 flour mix suggestions: All purpose gf, featherlight, light bean flour, and 4 bean flour. I didn't have any garfava bean flour on hand, so I played with what I had and combined it with Gluten-free Girl's recipe for crepes.

The key to the gf-problem for crepes is there, on her blog. She advises you to be creative (yay!) and keep a 70/30 ratio of flour. 7 parts whole grains to 3 parts starches. Yep, I was doing it the other way around because the inexpensive gf flours are the starches (potato starch, tapioca flour, white rice flour). Thin, fine crepes need a heavy protein content to be flexible and strong. Oh, and use a LOT of brown rice flour because it's tasty.

Choose 700 grams of any combination of the following flours:

Almond
Amaranth
Brown Rice
Buckwheat
Corn
Millet
Oat
Quinoa
Sorghum
Sweet Brown Rice
Teff

And then throw in 300 grams of any combination of the following:

Arrowroot
Cornstarch
Potato Starch
Tapioca Flour
White Rice Flour

Before you know it, you'll have perfect crepes without wheat flour.