The honest truth about gluten-free flour blends: most of them are fine for some things and terrible for others. After testing eleven brands across six different recipe types, here’s what I actually found.
The method
I baked the same four recipes with each blend: a simple butter-style cake, a pizza dough, pancakes, and a thickened sauce. Each was rated on texture, flavor, and whether it behaved the way the recipe expected it to.
The top two
Bob’s Red Mill 1-to-1 Baking Flour and King Arthur Measure for Measure were genuinely interchangeable with all-purpose flour in all four tests. Not “pretty good for GF.” Actually interchangeable.
The ones to avoid
Two blends — which I won’t name because I’d rather not get emails — produced gummy, dense results in every single test. They’re fine if you’re specifically following a recipe designed for them, but they’ll ruin an all-purpose conversion.
The middle ground
Most blends land here: great for one or two applications, mediocre for others. Read the label carefully. If it says “for baking” rather than “1-to-1,” it probably needs its own recipe.