Baking with only white flour and white granulated sugar is sort of like cooking with only one spice. There is a world of grains and sweeteners with their own flavors and textures just waiting to be incorporated into your baking. Not only will they make your treats more healthful, but they will also make them taste better!
While it’s easy to stop at white all-purpose when you think of flour, there are all sorts of flours that each bring a little something extra to snacks. Understanding the flavors and textures of these flours is important when you decide to incorporate them into your cooking.
Barley flour brings a slight sweetness to your baked goods, along with a good amount of dietary fiber. Adding a bit in place of wheat flour makes for very tender baked goods, so it’s best used for cakes or pastries that benefit from the extra lightness.
Graham flour is a blend of coarsely grown 100 percent whole-wheat flour with all-purpose white flour. You can buy graham flour already blended, or make your own to use as a great general substitute for straight all-purpose flour.
When it comes to rye flour, forget about the strong aroma of rye bread, which comes from the caraway seeds in the dough rather than from the grain. Rye actually has a very subtle wheat-like flavor that is just a bit more complex than traditional whole-wheat flours. It’s a great flour to use in chocolate baked goods.
Spelt and kamut flours are in the same family as wheat flour, but they have a lower gluten level that is more easily tolerated by people with mild gluten intolerance. Because they still contain gluten, spelt and kamut flours can easily replace wheat flour in most recipes, but they are not recommended for those with celiac or severe gluten allergies.
There are many different types of whole-wheat flours suited for different purposes; they all contain the full goodness of the grain. The recipes in this book will often call for white whole-wheat flour (processed the same way as regular whole-wheat flour, but made from hard white spring wheat instead of red wheat), whole-wheat pastry flour (more finely milled, lower protein soft wheat), or traditional whole-wheat flour. You can easily substitute spelt flour (either white or whole-grain) for these flours.
It seems like every day new flours show up on the shelves of my local market. While many of the recipes in this book specify particular flours, feel free to experiment. If you have a favorite flour, try substituting a little into the recipes for your own versions of these snacks.
Arrowroot, made from the root of the plant of the same name, is one of the most common substitutes for cornstarch. Arrowroot thickens quickly and can be used in frozen desserts to help keep ice crystals from forming.
Despite the name, buckwheat isn’t related to wheat. When leafy buckwheat plants flower, they produce triangularly shaped groats that can be cracked and ground into a nutty flour. Buckwheat flour pairs equally well with sweet or savory foods.
Although not as readily available as many of the other nut flours, chestnut flour has been used for ages in baking (primarily in Italian baked goods) and has a subtle sweetness, reminiscent of cocoa. It’s fantastic when used in small amounts to boost the flavor of doughs, but it’s quite dense, so use it sparingly.
Chia seed meal is made by finely grinding whole chia seeds. You can easily make your own with a spice grinder at home. In addition to being high in nutrients, chia meal becomes viscous when wet, and can add elasticity to gluten-free dough, making it easier to handle. Moistened, ground chia seeds are also a very good replacement for eggs in baked goods.
Chickpea, or garbanzo bean, flour is a strongly flavored flour that loses some of its beany aroma during baking. While chickpea flour has a great texture for baking, it’s typically better used for savory baked goods, like flat-breads and crackers, where its flavor enhances rather than detracts from the finished product.
Corn flour is finely ground cornmeal that can be used in baked goods to lighten texture. Because the meal is so finely ground, it doesn’t have the grit that stone-ground cornmeal has. Cornmeal is more coarsely ground and is often prepared more as a cereal, such as in grits or polenta. Cornmeal can be white or yellow and comes in a variety of coarsenesses, from stone-ground to fine ground. Added to baked goods, it brings a light crunch and slightly nubby texture.
Cornstarch acts as a thickener, but it also has anticaking properties; it is often used to help keep moisture from creeping into dry goods and forming clumps. When making your own pantry items, it’s easy to replace cornstarch with other starches such as arrowroot, potato starch, tapioca starch, or rice starch.
Flaxseed meal is made by finely grinding whole flaxseed. You can easily make your own with a spice grinder at home. In addition to being high in nutrients, flaxseed meal can also act as a binder and, when mixed with a bit of water, is a surprisingly good replacement for eggs in baked goods.
Most gluten-free whole-grain flours have strong underlying flavors, but not ground millet. This fine, powdery flour is hard to distinguish in flavor from its wheat counterpart and is an excellent way to add iron and fiber to lighter, more refined baked goods.
Finely ground nuts of any sort—such as almonds, hazelnuts, or walnuts—make a great addition to many baked goods and in some cases can replace other flours altogether. French macarons, for instance, traditionally use finely ground almond meal folded into meringue. Ground nuts bring moisture, flavor, and protein to baked goods.
Oat flour has a soft sweetness that helps create tender doughs. It produces the best results when mixed with other flours; otherwise the doughs can get too dense. I like oat flour best when used in cookie and cracker doughs. Although oat flour can be gluten-free, it’s important to be careful of your source, as oat fields and wheat fields are often grown side by side and many oat products may have some wheat accidentally incorporated into them.
Potato flour absorbs moisture, and while it can impart a lovely flavor and help to bind dough almost as much as gluten does, too much will result in a very rubbery or gummy texture. Potato flour has a strong potato flavor, so it should always be used sparingly. While potato flour is made from whole potatoes, potato starch is made from dehydrated, peeled potatoes. Unlike potato flour, potato starch is neutral in flavor. You can use potato starch in place of cornstarch in most recipes.
Sweet rice starch (like mochiko) or glutinous rice starch is a mild starch that is used to lighten baked goods. Brown rice flour can be used as well, but be sure to get it finely ground or your baked goods may have a slightly gritty texture.
Sorghum is a grass grain that is one of the more common flours found in gluten-free baking. Mildly sweet in flavor, sorghum adds dietary fiber, protein, and iron to baked goods. Sorghum needs to be combined with other starches to bake well and should typically only make up 20 percent of the overall flour content.
Tapioca starch (sometimes called tapioca flour) is made from cassava root and is commonly used as a thickener. This starch is also used to make tapioca balls (or pearls). Tapioca starch can absorb up to twice its volume in liquid and can also be used to absorb liquid fats to create a granule or powder, as in Cheese Powder (this page).
Teff is a dark, ancient grain that is gluten-free. Teff is most widely known as the grain used in injera, an Ethiopian sourdough cràpe. Because of its mild and slightly malty flavor, it’s easily incorporated into chocolate baked goods as well as more savory crackers and breads.
Flours like quinoa flour and amaranth flour are packed with nutrition and have a grassy, slightly bitter flavor. Mesquite flour is subtly sweet and almost cocoa-like in flavor. A tablespoon of soy flour or kinako flour helps baked goods stay fresh longer.
You can easily purchase all-purpose gluten-free baking mixes in most grocery stores now, but if you want to make your own, I suggest following the recommendation of Shauna James Ahern (GlutenFreeGirl.com) to combine 40 percent whole-grain flour with 60 percent starch, based on the flavor profile you like. A great combination would be 100 grams sorghum or oat flour, 100 grams ground millet flour, 100 grams sweet rice starch, 100 grams tapioca starch, and 100 grams potato starch (not flour!).
Hopefully, with these recipes, I’m going to change everything you think about what sugar should look and taste like. Sure, there is a certain visual appeal to a dark chocolate doughnut dusted in bright white powder … but have you ever actually tasted powdered sugar straight from the bag? The flavor is almost toxic.
While the sugars and syrups I recommend in this book are still sugar, and therefore not low calorie or particularly good on the teeth, they are more flavorful, a little higher in nutrition, and easier for the body to process than the standard bleached, granulated, or powdered sugars.
There has been much debate in recent years as to the actual healthfulness of agave syrup. True, it’s just as processed as corn syrup, but I find its clean, bright flavor very pleasing. It does not, however, work as a good replacement for corn syrup in any recipes that require specific temperatures for the sugar. I like agave best in recipes like ice pops. If using agave syrup in a recipe that calls for dry sugar, you’ll need to use two-thirds as much.
Brown rice syrup is made by fermenting rice with enzymes to break down the kernel. The syrup has an incredibly buttery sweetness, almost bordering on butterscotch. It works like corn syrup in most recipes (much better than honey or agave do), but has a lower glycemic index. But be aware that most of the sweetness in brown rice syrup comes from maltose, which is a simple sugar that is quickly absorbed into the blood stream, so brown rice syrup can be a problem for diabetics.
Also, because some brown rice syrup is made by using enzymes from barley, those with gluten sensitivities need to read labels carefully to find a syrup that is certified gluten-free.
Most granulated sugar is cane sugar, but some is more processed than others. Evaporated cane sugar still has some of the molasses from the original pressing, so it’s slightly tan in color rather than pure white. It’s easy to use one for one in recipes that call for granulated sugar and is a good choice when making your own Powdered Sugar (this page).
Coconut sugar and palm sugar are different, but the names are often used interchangeably. Coconut sugar is a darker, unrefined sugar sold in dry crystal form. Non-coconut palm sugar, also known as date palm sugar, is usually sold in small round blocks. Both sugars are low on the glycemic index and have similar flavor profiles.
I love using honey for baking, particularly trying different types of honey with flavors and colors that can vary wildly based on what the bees chose to feast on and the time of year the honey was produced. You can substitute honey for up to a third of the sugar called for in most recipes where you think it would improve the flavor, although you may need to cut back on some of the liquid, depending on the recipe.
Like granulated sugar, muscavado is made from sugarcane, but the molasses is not removed. The darker the muscavado, the higher the molasses content. The sugar is very moist and a bit sticky and can be used easily in place of conventional brown sugar, with much more richness of flavor.
Often sold simply as unrefined and unbleached whole cane sugar, rapadura is a whole sugar where the molasses has never been separated from the sugars. It has a powdery texture (unlike raw sugar, which has coarse crystals) and is light tan in color. The flavor is deep and complex, tasting of caramel and molasses. Sucanat (SUgar CAne NATural) is similar in flavor and processing.
Turbinado is a large-crystal raw sugar made from pressed sugar cane juice. Its light golden color comes from a bit of the sugar cane molasses remaining in the crystals. It’s best used in preparations that melt the sugar or where the coarse grain adds to the texture. The flavor of turbinado is mild, but slightly deeper than standard granulated sugar. Like brown sugar (which is typically refined cane sugar with a small amount of molasses added later for color and moisture), turbinado isn’t much higher in nutrients than refined sugar, but it is deeper in flavor. Demerara sugar is the same as turbinado but comes from a colony in Guyana of the same name.
Yacon syrup is one of the healthier sweetener choices available, with a strong molasses flavor that works best paired with strong spice or chocolate flavors. Sorghum syrup is often used as a sweet topping for pancakes or biscuits, but can also be used in baking in place of molasses or honey. You won’t find tapioca syrup in your local grocery store, but with a bit of online searching you can find this inverted sugar that can work as a replacement for corn syrup and is great in ice cream.
Like most people who grew up in the seventies and eighties, I grew up in a margarine household, which was thought to be the healthier choice at the time. Maybe that’s why today I have such an appreciation for the flavor of real butter.
While coconut oil has had a bad reputation in the past for being high in saturated fats, newer studies have shown that it’s actually a very healthy fat. And baking with coconut oil or using it to pop your corn is a dream. The light oil gives a lovely rich crispness. Feel free to substitute coconut oil for the butter in almost any of the recipes in this book … except, perhaps, those with “butter” in their name, where the buttery flavor would be missed. Most coconut oils have a very mild flavor, but some (like the 365 Everyday Value brand unrefined coconut oil), have a stronger coconut taste, so you’ll want to take that into account when you are choosing your oil.
Flaxseed oil (also known as linseed oil) may not have the same fiber or antioxidant properties of the seeds themselves, but it’s still a great oil full of linolenic acid (an omega-3 fatty acid) and it has a delicious flavor. Always keep flaxseed oil refrigerated, as it is particularly susceptible to spoiling.
I use olive oil quite liberally in my cooking and usually have two or three different bottles of varying fruitiness and spiciness around. I keep a mild olive oil in a spray can for a quick spritz to “butter” pans. When olive oil is heated, it will lose its more subtle flavors, so there’s no need to use your expensive oils in any cooked preparation.
Safflower oil is tolerant of high heats and very mild in flavor. It’s my preferred oil for frying, as it has a very high smoking point.