I've never made gluten free bread, and I have a few pre-made mixes to try, but I also have some different flours and want to see which way will produce a product that my family likes the best. So, I'm sitting here with my new bread machine's recipe booklet reading the gluten fee recipes and realize that I don't have all the right flours. I bought one of every type that I can get locally....here's what I have:

Coconut flour
Arrowroot flour
Garbanzo bean flour
Brown Rice Flour
Potato Starch
Soy flour

Here's the flours that I don't have that the recipes are calling for:

Tapioca flour
Garfava flour (can I substitute with garbanzo bean flour since half of this flour is from garbanzo beans)
Quinoa flour
Amaranth flour
Sorghum flour

These flours aren't all in the same recipe, it's several ones. I just don't know what to substitute for them, or can I?

Thanks!!!

This is a very good question--I have the opposite problem--I want to figure out how I can substitute for quinoa when a recipe calls for it, and substitute for potato starch and bean fours.

I've heard cornstarch and arrowroot are interchangeable, but I am no expert. Sorry.

Make sure you sub a starch for a starch and a flour for a flour. Tapioca is usually really a starch so stick with any other starch, like corn potato, or arroroot(which is usually a starch). Sorghum is a heavier, moister flour so if the recipie calls for alot of it, it may result in a different product if you sub. and I'm not sure what to recommend. It's easier to get away with substitutions, if the quantity called for is smaller.

If you do get tapioca in the future, it is MUCH less expensive, actually very cheap, at the asian markets.

Are you sure you want to start your first gluten free baking adventures with a bread machine?

If you had all the ingredients and were following the recipes designed for it very closely, it's one thing, but these flour mixes are all going to react completely differently.

Try calling the grocery back up and seeing if they have tapioca starch, which is the same as tapioca flour, and is commonly used in things like pudding. The starch, not the pearls.

Tapioca becomes gummy when mixed with liquid and baked. Don't bake with tapioca all by itself unless you want rubber. Tapioca is typically used as about a 1/3 of mixtures such as

tapioca
rice
corn (starch)

tapioca
rice
potato (starch)

then other flours, which tend to be golden in color, are added in smaller amounts to add texture or taste, such as sorghum, amaranth, bean, quinoa, nutmeals. Garbanzo flour can be used for garafava flour, which is just 2 beans mixed together that nobody can find in the stores anyway. Coconut flour is technically a finely ground nut meal flour with very little starch.

Arrowroot is starchy, like cornstarch, as was mentioned.

What you could do then, is this. As your base flour mixture, use:

1/3 rice
1/3 arrowroot
1/3 potato starch

and then to this, add small amounts of garbanzo and coconut flours mixed together in a half and half mixture, to make another 1/4 to a 1/3 of a cup that would be added. (I don't use soy flour, ick. plus I had to cut back on soy consumption. you may use soy if you want to.) Or you could use flax meal, or ground up nut meals you make yourself, such as almond or walnut or pecan. It's easy to grind nuts in a blender.

So say the recipe called for 2 1/2 cups flour. you'd use:

2/3 cup rice
2/3 cup arrowroot
2/3 cup potato starch

1/4 cup garbanzo
1/4 cup coconut, or ground nuts

But bread machines are really wierd even with regular flour, so I'd try making this as a batter bread first in the regular oven and use smaller than normal bread pans to see what it does and how it comes out and how it tastes first. One thing you can do with oven baking is watch the bread and test it when it's "supposed" to be done by pulling it out, knocking on it, and then sticking a knife thru it to see if the knife comes back out clean and dry or sticky. If the knife is not clean, it goes back in the oven to bake some more.

Well, I'd tend to agree that diving right in to trying a whole loaf might lead to disappointment. If you have a muffin pan, maybe make just enough dough for that, or even just one muffin-sized 'loaf'. This would also help save money while you get the recipe right.

As for what flours can sub for what;given the ones you have it might not work so well. Sorghum is nearly the same as millet, which might be sub'd with 1 part rice flour + 1/4 part coconut flour. That's just my guess based on the fact that rice flour has more carbs and less fiber than sorghum. I haven't tried amaranth flour yet, but it does look similar to sorghum and millet as far as carbs, fiber, and protein content. I haven't tried quinoa, but it looks like it has very little to no fiber, and about the same protein as sorghum percentage-wise. Not sure what among the ones you have could work in place of that one, sorry.

Hey Rice Guy,

Thanks for that pointer. I didn't know that millet and sorghum were similar. I like millet; it is tasty and cheap. I'll try using it when a recipe calls for sorghum.

Have you used coconut flour much?