Baking Gluten-Free: What You Should Consider

If you want to bake gluten-free, this is easily possible with the right flour alternatives. In our article, you can find out what you should pay attention to when making cakes, biscuits, and the like without gluten.

Baking gluten-free: It is possible with these types of flour

Anyone who cannot tolerate the gluten contained in many types of flour or cannot break it down suffers from what is known as celiac disease. It is then important to avoid gluten and to use alternatives. When baking, use the following types of gluten-free flour instead of conventional wheat flour:

• Almond flour: The nutty alternative is particularly suitable for muffins or moist brownies. You can even make almond flour yourself with a powerful blender.
• Amaranth flour: This flour is ideal for savory recipes as it has a nutty, earthy taste.
• Millet flour: If you want to bake a sponge cake and need gluten-free flour with a mild taste, use millet flour.
• Soy flour: The flour obtained from soybeans tastes nutty and is a good basis for bread, pizza dough, or the like.
• Teff flour: This gluten-free flour comes from dwarf millet and has a mild, sweet taste. Therefore, use it for cakes and cookies.

It’s all in the mix: cornstarch and binder

Combine the above gluten-free flours with the following cornstarch and binders to create an ideal baking mix:

• Rice flour: The flour tastes extremely mild and is therefore suitable for a wide variety of recipes – an all-rounder, so to speak.
• Potato flour: This starch flour is made from potatoes. It makes the dough nice and moist, which is why it is particularly suitable for muffins or cakes.
• Cornstarch: Cornstarch, like potato flour, gives the dough a nice texture. You can also use the starch for puddings so that they become nice and firm and creamy.
• Locust Bean Gum: This binding agent is a good gluten substitute and essential for gluten-free recipes. It binds the ingredients and provides additional volume.
• Guar gum: Alternatively, use guar gum as glue. It binds water particularly well.

Tips and tricks for gluten-free baking

Once you have put together a suitable flour mixture of gluten-free flour, starch flour, and binding agent, you should also heed the following tips when baking for the sake of your health:

1. Before you start: Thoroughly clean your work surface to remove any traces of gluten.
2. It is best to use recipes that have been specially created for gluten-free baking. Since the gluten-free flour alternatives have a different structure and therefore different properties than conventional wheat flour, they behave differently and cannot be replaced 1:1.
3. The gluten-free dough has a wetter, stickier texture. Therefore, line the cake tin with parchment paper.
4. Be sure to follow the instructions in the recipe and implement them exactly. This is particularly important when baking without gluten.
5. It is also recommended to sift the ingredients such as flour or binding agents.
6. Tip: Use yogurt when baking gluten-free. It makes for a moist dough.