Your Absolute Guide to Gluten-Free Flours and Starches for Sourdough

From the roles different flours play in baked goods to how to substitute them, you'll find all the answers here.

Dec 29, 2024

We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives ... not looking for flaws but for potential.
-Ellen Goodman

I’m not sure about you all, but I often enter the New Year with a long list of things I would like to do differently or change about myself. This year I am entering into this new year more gently, less demanding of making myself someone I am not. One thing on the top of my list; create more and consume less. If this is also your goal and you are going to achieve it by learning to make your own gluten free sourdough baked goods, then I am here to be your coach and cheerleader. If you are new, welcome and if you are an original subscriber, I hope you find value in the things that are to come in the next year. Either way, thank you so much for being here with me!

If you haven’t checked out my post on keeping a gluten free pantry, please click on the following link. You might find it useful if you are just getting your gluten free sourdough pantry built. https://thenakedpear.substack.com/p/your-gluten-free-pantry-and-baking . These are all things I recommend and use in my own home and kitchen.

In this post you read about all the different gluten free flours, their properties, the best way to use them and substitutes for replacing them if for some reason you cannot use them. I will note, the recipes I post use the gluten free flours that I feel produce the best result/product. If for some reason you have to substitute a different flour, just know that the end result may not be exactly as the original recipe.

I would like to note that I try to use organic grains/flours/starches whenever I can. I also like to grind my own flours in my mill and my blender, as freshly milled flours are superior nutritionally and have greater depth of flavor. Also, whole grains are much less expensive to buy and have a longer shelf life than flour. I know a grain mill is not realistic for most people, or even a priority. At the bottom of this post, you will see the flours you can make at home in your high speed blender.

Gluten Free Flours and their Properties:

Light Buckwheat Flour:

Light buckwheat flour is one of my absolute favorite flours to bake with and you will find it in a lot of my recipes. Despite it’s name, it has no relation to wheat. It has a neutral and mild flavor that that pairs well with most bakes. Buckwheat flour is higher in protein and fiber than even oat flour. It is complete protein and contains all 9 essential amino acids. When hydrated, it has a sticky quality that helps create a nice structure in breads and structure in your gluten free starters.

Buckwheat flour substitutions: super fine brown rice flour, sorghum flour, gluten free oat flour.

Favorite brands: I like to make my own buckwheat flour, which can be done in your high speed blender. Just buy light buckwheat groats and grind what you need in your blender. Nothing beats freshly milled flour for baking! If you don’t want to grind your own, then you can order Anthony’s brand off of Amazon.

Sorghum Flour:

Sorghum flour has a sweet, slightly nutty/grassy flavor, almost a cross between brown rice flour and buckwheat flour. It is a soft, fine flour with good binding qualities. It is best combined with other gluten free flours as using too much can cause a “grainy” texture to your bakes. Sorghum flour can sometimes require more water or liquid in a recipe, as it can produce a more “dry” baked product. It is best to not use more than 30-40% sorghum flour in recipes.

Sorghum flour substitutions: millet flour, light buckwheat flour or gluten free oat flour.

Favorite Brands: If I don’t grind my own grain, I usually buy my sorghum flour from the bulk section of my local bulk store. Food to Live brand has a good sorghum flour, however it is expensive. A lot of people like Bob’s Red Mill sorghum flour, but I personally do not have much experience with their flours.

Millet Flour:

This lovely yellow seed makes for a fine, slightly gritty flour. It is earthy and sweet. I like to use it best in bakes that require a finer crumb and do not usually use it in bread recipes. It can add a lovely “crisp-ness” to bakes, which is why it is in my pie crust and pastry recipes. Millet is harder to substitute, because of it’s unique, delicate characteristics.

Millet flour substitutions: sorghum flour, light buckwheat flour.

Favorite Brands: Millet flour can be made at home in your high speed blender. I also buy millet flour from my local bulk food store or the bulk section of Natural Grocers.

Gluten Free Oat Flour:

Gluten free oat flour makes a delightful addition to many gluten free breads and baked goods. Oat flour has a slightly sweet and quite neutral flavor. It keeps baked goods more moist and lofty than the other grains, due to its higher fat content. Please note, not all people who suffer from celiac disease can tolerate oats, even if they are certified gluten free.

Oat flour substitutions: sorghum flour (but your end result will be different and potentially more dry), light buckwheat flour or teff flour.

Favorite Brands: I love One Degree Organics brand oats. They are certified gluten free and glyphosate free. Oat flour is the easiest flour to make at home. Just blend your oats in any style blender, you don’t even need a high speed blender.

When selecting an oat flour, it is very important to make sure it is approved for celiac consumption. This means you need to find certified gluten free oats/flour.

Sweet Rice Flour:

Not to be confused with regular rice flour, sweet rice flour is finely ground from glutinous rice (or sticky rice). Despite its name, this rice does not contain gluten. It has a sweet flavor, chewy texture, and can create elasticity in baked goods, which makes it ideal for adding to gluten free baked goods.

Sweet Rice flour substitutions: this flour is incredibly hard to substitute, but if you must, you can try cassava flour or tapioca starch.

Favorite Brands: My favorite brand is Authentic Foods. It is very finely ground and I can find it in my local grocery store. You can also find it online. Another great brand is Koda Farms.

Superfine Brown Rice Flour:

When using brown rice flour in your gluten free baking, it is really important that you get super fine brown rice flour. If it is not finely ground, then the rice flour has a hard time properly absorbing liquid and can make for a dense, heavy loaf of bread or baked good.

Brown rice flour is used because it is easily found and relatively inexpensive. It is a grain lower in nutritional value than other gluten free grains and can be high in arsenic. It is for these reasons I do not use brown rice flour as a main grain in my baking. I like to use it to feed my starter, in a 50/50 blend of brown rice flour and light buckwheat flour. I find my starter thrives best on this combination of flours. Also, brown rice flour ferments much faster than other gluten free flours, which should be noted if you are substituting it for another flour in a recipe.

Brown Rice flour substitutions: light buckwheat flour, sorghum flour

Favorite Brands: Authentic Foods makes a superfine brown rice flour that is superior to any other I’ve found, however it is not organic. I also love the organic brown rice flour from my local bulk food store. It is very finely ground as well as organic. I have also used Anthony’s brand in the past, but it is not as finely ground and doesn’t absorb liquid as well as Authentic Foods brand.

Gluten Free Starches and their Properties:

Starches add much needed lightness and structure to gluten free baked goods. They are needed to make a reliably tasty bake! They are low in nutrients however and I try to use as little of them as possible in my bakes. There are certain bakes that have higher starches in them, you will find these are usually special occasion bakes and not every day, nutrient dense bread recipes.

Tapioca Starch:

It is made from the yucca root (cassava), with the fiber removed. Tapioca starch helps add “stretch” to your baked goods, like your pie dough and pastry dough. It also adds lightness to other bakes.

Tapioca starch substitute: arrowroot powder

Favorite Brand: TerraSoul is the only brand I use for tapioca starch, however most brands should work just fine.

Potato Starch:

Potato starch gives a smooth texture and tenderness to gluten free baked goods. It also provides structure and binding power. It is not the same as potato flour and cannot be substituted for potato flour.

Potato starch substitute: corn starch or tapioca starch (however if there is already tapioca starch in the recipe it may be too much)

Favorite Brand: I love the Thrive Market organic potato starch, but if I forget to order some, then I use Bob’s Red Mill brand.

Psyllium Husk Powder and its Properties:

Psyllium husk powder is what binds your bread together. I acts like gluten would in sourdough made with wheat flour. It gives your bread structure and some flexibility, allowing you to knead and shape your bread. Psyllium also absorbs a great amount of water. This helps because gluten free grains are not great at absorbing all of the water/liquid, so the psyllium allows you to have a workable dough, instead of a dough like cake batter.

*It should be noted that whole psyllium husks and psyllium husk powder are not the same ingredient. I prefer the powder and my recipes will specifically use psyllium husk powder. Whole psyllium husks do not absorb water as well. You would need about 20% more whole psyllium husks than powder by weight. So, if you choose to use whole husks, please remember to use 20% more, by weight.

Psyllium husk substitutions: there are no substitutions

Favorite Brand: I only use TerraSoul brand psyllium husk powder. It is by far superior to any other brand out there. It is finely ground and creates a suburb baked good. You can truly tell the difference once you switch to this brand.

Freshly milled flours you can make in your high speed blender:

There is great benefit to baking with freshly milled grains. Freshly milled grains have a higher nutritional value as well as a more fresh flavor that translates into your baked goods. Also, whole grains are often less per pound than flour, making them a more economical choice for gluten free bakers. Many gluten-free grains are soft enough to be ground directly in high-speed blenders, making freshly milled flours more accessible than most people realize. Below is a list of grains you can mill in your high speed blender.

light buckwheat groats
millet
certified gluten free oats
sorghum (makes sure you sift it through a fine mesh sieve after blending)
whole psyllium husks

Make sure you blend about 2 cups at a time, otherwise you won’t get a fine grind on your gluten free grains.

*Please, never try grinding rice into flour in your blender. Rice is much too hard and would probably ruin your blender. Not to mention, because it is so hard, you wouldn’t be able to grind it fine enough to make a usable flour.

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While the above are not all of the gluten free flours and starches available, they are the ones you will find in my recipes the most. If I use an unusual flour in a recipe, I will introduce it and talk more about it in the post.

I hope you all are ready to jump into some fun and versatile gluten free sourdough baking this new year. Adding and improving on a life skill that benefits you and loved ones, seems like a pretty great skill to build in 2025.