Here is something we should say out loud more often: that dense, damp loaf was not your technique. It was the flour doing exactly what that flour does.
Single gluten-free flours are specialists. Wheat is the generalist — it bulks, binds, stretches and browns all by itself, which is why a hundred years of recipes never had to explain any of this. Take the wheat away and you need a small team. Nine of them, roughly.
Here's the honest version of each one's CV.
1. Chickpea flour — brilliant at savoury, ruins your sponge
Earthy, high in protein, and the backbone of farinata and socca. It binds fritters without egg and thickens a stew in seconds. Will ruin: a delicate vanilla sponge. That beany bitterness needs salt, oil and heat to mellow — sugar only makes it louder.
2. Sorghum flour — brilliant as the base, ruins a loaf flying solo
The closest thing to wheat in flavour we mill. Mildly sweet, pale, no bitterness, and it carries everything else in the bowl. This is why our Sorghum flour 450g is the one we tell people to start with — milled in our own dedicated gluten-free mill and sieved to 160 microns, which is wheat-flour fineness. Fineness is not a detail here. Coarse sorghum is sandy on the tongue, and no amount of resting the dough fixes it.
Will ruin: anything asking for stretch on its own. Sorghum has structure but no elasticity. Give it a binder.
3. Millet flour — brilliant on day one, ruins day two
Buttery, golden, faintly sweet. Magnificent in muffins, cornbread-style loaves and shortbread. Will ruin: anything you want to eat tomorrow. Millet goes crumbly and dry fast, and its natural oils turn bitter in an open bag. Buy smaller, store cool, bake it the same week.
4. Quinoa flour — brilliant for structure, ruins sweet bakes
High protein, strong backbone, excellent in pizza bases, savoury crackers and anything that needs to hold its shape. Will ruin: a pale, buttery biscuit. Quinoa brings a grassy, almost herbal note that fights sugar and wins. Keep it under about 25% of a blend unless you actively want to taste it.
5. Green pea flour — brilliant for savoury depth, ruins the colour story
Protein, fibre, and a sweet-vegetal flavour that's lovely in savoury pancakes, flatbreads and as a soup thickener. Will ruin: anything that should look neutral. It tints batter a greenish-grey that reads as a mistake even when it tastes right. Lean in or leave it out.
6. Red lentil flour — brilliant in pasta, ruins a crisp biscuit
Thirsty, protein-rich, and the reason legume pasta holds together. It drinks water, firms up, and stays firm — which is exactly what you want in a dough that gets boiled. Will ruin: a snappy biscuit. That same water-holding keeps the centre soft and slightly leathery no matter how long you bake it.
7. Brown rice flour — brilliant as bulk, ruins anything silky
Mild, affordable, does the quiet job of filling out a blend. Will ruin: custards, smooth sauces and thin pancakes. The bran gives it grit you can feel on the roof of your mouth. It also has oil in that bran, so it stales and turns faintly rancid quicker than people expect. Smell it before you bake with it.
8. Golden flax — brilliant as a binder, ruins a light crumb
Mixed with water it goes gel-like in ten minutes and holds a crumb together beautifully. Brilliant in seeded crackers and rustic loaves. Will ruin: airiness. Past about two tablespoons in a loaf you get a wet, gummy centre that reads as underbaked. It isn't. It's just flax doing too much.
9. White rice flour — brilliant for crunch, ruins a tender loaf
Tempura, dusting a work surface, the snap in a shortbread. Genuinely unbeatable at crisp. Will ruin: bread. It brings no flavour, little protein and a chalky finish — it's the filler that made a generation decide gluten-free bread tastes like gluten-free bread. We don't lean on it, and our milled range carries no corn starch or rice fillers at all.
The rule that fixes most of it
Stop looking for the one flour that does everything. Build a team of three instead.
- A base — 50 to 70%, mild and fine. Sorghum, usually.
- A character flour — 20 to 30%. Millet for sweet, chickpea or quinoa for savoury.
- A binder — 2 to 3% psyllium husk, or flax if you want a rustic crumb. This is the part that replaces gluten, not the flour.
My father published something like two hundred papers on grain, and the thread running through all of them is unglamorous: know what the material actually does before you ask it for a favour. Nine flours, nine jobs. Give each one the job it's good at and the baking gets easy.
Start with sorghum. It forgives the most.
Find our Sorghum flour 450g at millandfolks.com.
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Miklos Founder & CEO, Mill & Folks |
