Having the ability to mill your own flours from a large variety of seeds/beans/grains is the BEST way to test and try all kinds of flours because you are assured getting fresh flour, and FRESH is ALWAYS best!!! I avoid commercial flours because any nutrients and oils have long since degraded from exposure to oxygen once the whole seed/bean/grain has been milled. You have NO idea of how long these commercially prepared flours have been warehoused and shelved....

If you study using gluten-free flours in general, you'll have better results with these non-wheat flours. You can usually find certain baking/cooking characteristics by looking at the group - bean group, seed group, etc. A quick search on the flour + recipes and you'll find recipes using most of these to give you an idea of how they work.

-Using gluten-free flours in general, you nearly always need to use additional ingredients to reduce dryness, increase volume and tenderness, and enhance or mask flavor.

-Jowar is another name for sorghum flour - a flour I've used in gluten-free recipes. A favorite cookie of ours is made with sorghum flour and Nutella. We have a GF sorghum flour mill just outside of town and I've developed cookie recipes for them.

Sorghum flour tends to be gritty, so I often use it with a mixture of other textures, like oatmeal, unsweetened coconut in a fine shred, etc.

You can also incorporate a "soaked flour" technique (as in sponging), to alter texture. Texture can change after freezing baked goods, oddly enough.

-I tend to add 1/2 to 1 T. of corn starch to every cup of sorghum flour to improve smoothness and moisture retention. If there is a corn allergy to contend with, arrowroot flour can be used measure for measure where corn starch is used.

-Guar Gum and xanthan gum are used as binding agents. You can add 1/2 t. xanthan gum per cup of flour for cookies and cakes; or 1 t. per cup for breads.

-Additional fat or an extra egg yolk. This helps combat dryness and aids crumb structure. Egg whites are drying.

-Extra chemical leavening (baking powder/baking soda) is often used for more "lift".

-Some recipes will alter by how long you mix things, so extra mixing time may work better than less mixing time.

-Rajgara (could be the same as your rajgaru) is amaranth flour. I harvested enough amaranth from 12 plants last year to last 5-years! I tend to use whole amaranth seeds like I would poppy seeds in quick breads, to increase protein, nutrition, and add a little crunchy texture, or as a breakfast cereal. Most of the amaranth consumed around the world is made into a gruel or thick soup flavored with fat or chilies. Amaranth seeds/flour needs to be cooked/baked, not consumed raw. If the seeds or flour is old, has been exposed to light or stored in a warm place, it will be bitter.

I mill it in a seed mill (the seeds are too tiny to mill in a grain mill) and have several recipes where it's used as a portion of the flour in yeast breads to increase the nutrient profile. I wouldn't add any more than 10% amaranth flour.

-"Dal" - is always some kind of bean or lentil. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dal

I mill chana dal (immature garbanzo beans that look like split peas) into flour because they are low-glycemic and don't raise blood glucose. I use chana dal flour to make an "instant" hummus dip like I use milled pinto bean flour to make "instant" refried beans. "Urid dal flour" (or urad) is a black bean.

I'll have to look through my Ayurvedic Cookbooks to see if any of those ingredients are used in food preparation. I'm sure they are, so that's another source for information.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Cook's Thesaurus - nonwheat flours

Thanks GrainLady

You really seem to know all about this!! I'm impressed.

Is Corn Starch the same as Corn Flour?

I have a coffee grinder at home - is that the same as milling the seeds?

When I grind lentils and beans, do I need to soak them first, as before cooking?

1. Corn starch, in the U.S., is a fine white powder made from the starch portion of corn, used as a thickener or ingredient in cooking/baking.

Corn flour is a fine flour milled from seeds of corn in a grain mill - just as milled wheat makes whole wheat flour, you can mill corn into flour, as well.

I believe U.S. corn starch is called "cornflour" or "maize cornflour" in other parts of the world.

To add to the confusion, we also have corn meal which is milled from corn into a fine/medium/coarse grind, but it's more coarse than flour. Corn meal is generally milled from corn with the germ removed (de-germed corn meal). Yellow or white corn are generally used. The corn I mill at home is milled with the whole corn seed, nothing removed.

2. A coffee/spice mill is somewhat different than a seed mill, although they can often be used for the same type of milling. My seed mill is a Porkert Seed Mill, which you clamp to a table and is hand-powered. You can adjust the grind from fine to coarse, which you can't do with a coffee/spice mill.

3. I grind whole DRY beans/lentils into a flour using a grain mill. In one type of soaking method called a "sponge", you accomplish it after the beans/lentils are milled into a fine flour. A sponge in breadmaking is where liquid, yeast, and a portion of flour is mixed together and let stand for anywhere between 30-minutes to 24-hours. It's also called a pre-ferment.

Another method of "soaking flour" is one common to many cultures where the flour is mixed in sour or cultured milk, buttermilk, or cream. The sour milk products provide lactic acid and lactobacilli that help break down complex starches and difficult-to-digest proteins. An example is mixing oatmeal with buttermilk and letting it sit, covered, overnight and making it into scones the next day.

You can also soak beans/seeds and then sprout them. Dry the sprouts and mill it into flour. This is usually called sprouted flour. Check the link below for a little more information.

You need a powerful grain mill (either electric or hand-powered) to be able to mill many of the hard beans/seeds/grains. A coffee/spice mill isn't appropriate for all milling. My Nutri Mill can mill something as large and hard as a garbanzo bean or a fava bean - but it can't mill tiny or oily seeds - teff, sesame, amaranth, poppy seeds... Which is why I own many types of mills.

-Grainlady

Here is a link that might be useful: Healthy Banquet - Soaking Grains/Flours

Hi again GrainLady

Thank you once again. I hope you don't mind my taking advantage of your expertise, but do you have any thoughts about gluten-free Sourdough bread?

I have a good, vibrant brown rice flour starter, and have tried to make bread with it several times, but it hasn't risen. I use lukewarm water, and try to use it when it is at the peak of its rise. Then - once mixed - I let all of the ingredients sit for several hours, but there is little or no rise, and none in the oven either.

Do you have any thoughts or tips???

Guyshahar -

Always happy to help...

I've made lots of sourdough bread, but never any GF. A few things come to mind....

1. What kind of rice are you using for rice flour?

There is a difference in the performance in rice flour in baked goods by what type of rice you use for flour. Flour made from any long-grain rice is best used for breading, sauces or as a thickener. Short- and medium-grain rice work best for flour for baked goods. Unfortunately, most commercial makers of rice flour omit what variety of rice is used. Yet one more reason to mill your own. You can mill rice (in small batches) in a spice/coffee mill.

For 1-cup rice flour: mill 3/4-cup minus 1 T. short-grain rice.

2. An old trick for speeding up the fermentation of sourdough bread, without compromising the taste of sourdough - add 1/8 t. SAF-Instant Yeast.

3. Try a different recipe.

-Grainlady

Thanks GrainLady

Will try those things. (Actually, I have a loaf proofing at the moment with starter AND yeast.....)

Have been using a blend of:
2 parts Sorghum flour
1 part Potato flour
1 part Tapioca flour
1 part Gram flour
1 part brown rice flour (type not given....)

Taste is great, but texture is like a rock!!