Are all Flours created equal?

[Anna Hart]

I am trying to get away from using white flour. I have been experimenting with spelt and quinoa flour. I love the taste of quinoa flour or maybe it is the texture I love but it doesn't seem to hold together as well - my muffins are yummy but crumbly. I don't mind but DH finds it annoying. Spelt flour seems a bit more hardy but my bread isn't rising as nicely. Can anyone help?

[Rosemary]

Quinoa flour has no gluten. Gluten-free baking usually uses some sort of additive such as xanthan gum to hold things together. Spelt has gluten, but not as much as wheat.

BUT all flours are finely-chopped grains, and have a higher impact on blood sugar than actual whole grains. Whole grain flour, whether whole wheat or from another grain, has a slightly smaller impact - but it does have more nutrients from the grain compared to white flour.

[redfox]

My best bread recipe has a basis of half whole wheat and half white flour. To that I add rolled oats, bran flakes, & sunflower seeds, so there is plenty of chewiness and the basic dough is light. I use lots of yeast & sugar too, ad I love a yeasty bread.

[Cypress]

In general, I use King Arthur Flour for all my baked goods. As I only bake on Sunday, every other week, I store my flour in the refrigerator. Before I use it to bake, I measure out the desired amount and let them come to room temperature. Sometimes I blend in wheat germ but rarely mix or use other types of flour.

[Perplexa]

It's the gluten (a kind of protein) in wheat flour that lets your bread rise. The gluten forms a stretchy dough with lots of air pockets, and as the yeast breathes, it fills up the pockets with air, making the bread rise. White bread will usually come out lighter and fluffier than whole wheat bread, but you can make whole wheat bread come out well with practice. I wouldn't try to use a regular wheat bread recipe for non-wheat bread. There are plenty of recipes out there for gluten free (non-wheat) bread, but they'll never come out light and fluffy like wheat bread.

(All that said, spelt is actually a kind of wheat, though the protein content is different than "regular" wheat. That's probably why it's working better than the quinoa. In fact, according to my bread book, not only does quinoa not have gluten in it, it's not even technically a grain. It's related to beets and swiss chard!)

[lhamo]

I haven't actually been able to see her blog or get her books yet, but you might want to have a look at Gluten Free Girl's stuff -- she has a blog and at least one (maybe two?) books out. She does a LOT of experimentation with gluten-free baking and in interviews I have heard with her she has talked quite a bit about the different flours.

A good bread-focused cook book that discusses some of the scientific aspects of how gluten works might be a good resource to check out, too. There is the "Artisan bread in five minutes a day" book, of course, but its discussion of flours is a bit simplistic. Try Jim Lehey's "MY Bread" (he's the guy who "invented" the no knead bread technique). And if you have access to a good library system, I would just search Amazon for "artisan bread" to get a bunch of other titles and see which ones you can get -- seem to be a LOT out there these days on the art and science of breadmaking.

This blog might have some good information, too:

http://www.wildyeastblog.com/

Happy baking!

lhamo