‘The dry and grainy results wouldn't persuade me': the best (and worst) gluten-free plain flour, tested and rated
Gluten-free flour is commonly considered in two ways: there are individual flours, such as rice and buckwheat (and that includes starches such as corn, potato, tapioca), and then there are blends. Blends are a mix of those singular flours in varying ratios, and for familiarity's sake are usually labelled as either gluten-free plain, self-raising or bread flour. These blends are more versatile, and it's the plain flours that we've got under the microscope today.
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To test their mettle, I made a batch of gluten-free cookies with each product. And, seeing as gluten-free food can be extortionately expensive, cost is factored into my ratings, too. A slight caveat: different gluten-free flour blends work better (or worse) depending on the recipe involved. Most will do just fine as a thickener for sauces or as a coating, but when it comes to baking, some are better suited to cakes, others to pastry and others still to bread. That means it's very hard to say which flour is the 'best', but I've done my best to figure it out.
£1.95 for 1kg at Sainsbury's (20p/100g)£1.95 for 1kg at Ocado (20p/100g)★★★★★
Gluten-free flour blends were originally created to emulate wheat flour (so you can use them to adapt recipes to be gluten-free), and this one produces a similar performance to wheat for everything outside of bread baking. Of course, it's not magic; you still need good recipes and, in some cases, the addition of xanthan gum.
£1.10 for 1kg at Asda (11p/100g)★★★★☆
A solid performance for the price, and certainly a blend that will produce satisfying results for baking. It's a bit less absorbent than I'd expect, which might mean your dough ends up a little stickier, but if you know what consistency you're looking for, that shouldn't be hard to remedy by adding a little more to compensate.
£8 for 1kg at Ocado (80p/100g)£8.29 for 1kg at Amazon (83p/100g)★★★☆☆
This blend contains gluten-free wheat starch so, while it's gluten-free, it's not suitable for people with a wheat allergy. As such, its strengths lie in bread-making, rather than your average cake or bake. For bread, it would be five stars, but for pure versatility (and considering the sky-high price), it's not a panacea.
£3.90 for 1.5kg at Ocado (26p/100g)★★★☆☆
While this boasts an unconventional range of ingredients, such as vegetable flour and fibres, it produced results comparable to my best buy. However, the higher price means there's little reason to go hunting for this one.
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£2 for 1kg at Ocado (20p/100g)★★☆☆☆
With an identical list of ingredients to the Asda flour above, it's no surprise this yielded almost identical results. However, considering it's nearly twice the price (and while the Asda flour exists), there's not much justification for buying this.
£2.50 for 750g at Shipton Mill (33p/100g)★★☆☆☆
This was less able to bind and absorb common baking ingredients, making it feel as if you hadn't added enough – of course, adding too much can result in heavy, dense or dry bakes. The biscuits weren't all that far from expectations, but they were a little greasy.
£13.71 for 3kg at Food Angles (46p/100g)£20.82 for 3kg at Amazon (69p/100g)★☆☆☆☆
Even if this was considerably cheaper, the dry and grainy results wouldn't persuade me to use it in the average recipe. Its absorption and binding are far off expectations – although still not the worst of the bunch – and the finished result gave me the feeling that the balance of the blend must be completely off.
£2.50 for 1kg at Holland & Barrett (25p/100g)★☆☆☆☆
Despite having almost identical ingredients to my best buy, the results this produced were extremely disappointing. It lacked binding power and absorption to the point where it made the dough greasy, sticky and difficult to handle. Sadly, the end results were also excessively greasy and too far away from that of the average flour blend.
Becky Excell is a gluten-free cook and author of Quick + Easy Gluten-Free (Quadrille, £20). To order a copy, go to guardianbookshop.com
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