Finding the Best Gluten Free Flour

I’ve tried several common gluten free flour blends, so you don’t have to. Keep reading to see which flour makes the best loaf of bread.

Gluten free baking is difficult because gluten usually provides stretch and structure to the dough. So, today we’re testing out some commonly sold gluten free flours to see which one makes the best loaf of bread! Get the bread recipe here.

The Flours

Trader Joe’s Gluten Free Four- $3.99/lb.

I was super excited to find gluten free flour at TJ’s because I thought it would be reasonably priced. Turns out it’s more expensive by pound. When I made bread, the dough was sticky and the bread was gummy. I might be willing to try it again in other applications, but I wasn’t about to drive an hour for this flour. Somehow all the Trader Joe’s in the metro Atlanta area are an hour from my house! This one automatically comes in last…

Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 Gluten Free Baking Flour- $2.82/lb.

I love Bob’s other flours and some of their other GF products like their pizza dough. I found the 1.38 pound bag at Walmart for $3.88 making this the cheapest flour per pound as well as the cheapest bag if you just wanted to try it out.

King Arthur Measure for Measure Gluten Free Flour-$3.10/lb.

King Arthur has a good reputation for their wheat flours because of their sourcing and milling practices, so I was curious to try this one out! It was the most expensive purchase at $9.29. Since it’s a 3 pound bag, it ended up being one of the cheaper options per pound. What makes this flour unique is that it’s fortified with iron, calcium, and B vitamins. If you don’t know, flour in the US has to be enriched with iron and B vitamins, but gluten free flour falls into a loophole and does not. Eating a highly processed, GF diet could possibly lead to nutrient deficiencies since the flour isn’t fortified, so King Arthur has got you covered!

Pillsbury Gluten Free Four- $3.25/lb.

I honestly just saw this one at Publix and thought I’d pick it up. I hadn’t heard anything about this one, and it also isn’t the cheapest option. Let’s see how it turns out!

Cup4Cup Gluten Free Flour- $4.50/lb.

And finally we have my current favorite flour that I’ve been using for years. Cup4Cup was the flour we heard about when we first went gluten free, and we began to use it in our previously gluten-y recipes with pretty good success. It is the most expensive by a long shot, so let’s see if one of the cheaper flours will do the same job. I didn’t realize until recently that there is milk powder in their blend, so this one is off the table for people with dairy allergies or people eating dairy free. However, they have a new blend on their website that is dairy-free.

The results:

Coming last place for me here was the Bob’s Red Mill flour because it cooked much quicker than all the other loafs and ended up getting slightly burnt. It may have turned out better if I had cooked it less, but I’m trying to run a controlled experiment here! The loaf was brown and a little gummy. I was overall unimpressed by the flour for bread which surprised me because I love all their other products. Maybe they make better cookies?!

Next, was the Pillsbury flour because it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t really good either. It had a bit of bounce to it, but it was also a little to dense for my liking. I just felt pretty meh about it, and I wouldn’t probably buy it again for the price. The dough was really dry and formed a ball that I squished into a loaf shape.

In second place was King Arthur because it made a good loaf of bread. The final loaf wasn’t too dense, and it had a nice bounce to it. The dough wasn’t too dry, and I would eat it again. This flour has more of a whole wheat kind of feel which is nice when you want a hearty bread!

And the (possibly biased) winner is Cup4Cup!

I mean, look at that rise! None of the other flours even came close to rising the way that this loaf did. The bread ends up being fluffier and more springy which is what I want in a bread. I was really rooting for King Arthur to win out since it’s cheaper, but for breads and cakes where you want rise, I don’t know if anyone can beat Cup4Cup. One downside is that it’s a white flour. Cup4Cup does make a whole grain blend with flax, but it is denser and doesn’t rise as much. Factoring price and availability into the equation, I might have to go with King Arthur because it’s more than $1 cheaper per pound than Cup4Cup, but I can’t get over that rise!

Obviously, making bread is only one way to test out GF flours (although it’s what I miss most from the gluten-y world). How should I test out my flours next? Should we do the ultimate cookie showdown or make homemade pasta? Let me know what I should make next in the comments below!