Deciding Whether to Make or Buy a Flour Blend

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We think you should make our blend. It produces excellent results—and in many recipes those results are superior to anything possible with a store-bought blend. In a few cases (rolled holiday cookies, for example), the results with store-bought blends were so inferior that we can’t recommend using them. In addition to producing superior results, our homemade blend is cheaper than commercial blends, which cost an average of $4.50 per pound. Our blend costs about $2 per pound for the first batch, and subsequent batches will be even cheaper because there will be leftovers of some ingredients.

BUT IF YOU’RE GOING TO BUY A BLEND

The King Arthur blend is the closest (in terms of ingredients) to our blend and is our top choice for those cooks who want to buy a blend. Unfortunately, the distribution of this blend isn’t universal. About one-third of the volunteer testers who vetted recipes for this book reported they couldn’t find this flour in their local markets.

While we don’t like the bean flavors in the Bob’s Red Mill blend (this is a bigger issue in plain recipes but less so in recipes with a lot of sugar or other strong flavors), we like the structural properties of this blend, and our testers report that this product is very easy to find. For these reasons, we decided to test all recipes in this book with our homemade blend as well as with King Arthur and Bob’s Red Mill.

PAY ATTENTION TO G-F TESTING LAB

If you are using a store-bought blend, pay careful attention to this feature that accompanies recipes in this book. We use this feature to explain any noticeable structural or flavor issues resulting from the use of either of these two commercial flours in a specific recipe. Also, we will warn you about a few recipes that can’t successfully be made with a commercial blend.

ONE LAST WARNING

Given the increasing number of commercial flour blends on the market, we simply couldn’t test every recipe in this book with all of the various options. Therefore, we can’t guarantee your results unless you use our blend (our preference) or the blends made by King Arthur and Bob’s Red Mill.

SAME RECIPE, DIFFERENT FLOURS

Almost all of the recipes in this book can be made with our blend or blends made by King Arthur or Bob’s Red Mill. However, the fact that all three flour options will provide good results doesn’t mean they produce identical results. Below are yellow cupcakes made with each of the three flour blends. You can see appearance differences, and our tasters noted textural and flavor differences, too.

ATK BLEND

Cupcake rises extremely well, with slight doming. Crumb is fine and very tender.

KING ARTHUR

Cupcake is denser and doesn’t rise as well as other samples. Slight starchy taste.

BOB’S RED MILL

Cupcake rises well but crumb is more coarse and crumbly. Distinct bean flavor.