Gluten Free Rice Flour - from scratch

My daughter, who is 18, was diagnosed with Celiac Disease about 3-4 months ago. This means that all of my cooking had to change. Thank goodness I am someone who loves to cook, can follow a recipe, and can create something out of nothing. But, it was still a difficult thing to think about since I am also a southern cook. (thank goodness I don't make fried chicken.)

Over the last few months, I have Searched the Internet, read books, and experimented. While I am not an expert, I have been told that I should create a gluten free food blog. I am doing that because the one thing I seem to find is that ate majority of gluten free recipes do not even come close to the taste of the original food with gluten in it. So, my goal is to share some of the tricks I have found and recipes I have modified in order to get the flavor closest to the original.

For this first blog, I want to share a trick with you about making your own rice flour. I watched a video online and followed the directions as closely as possible by using my blender because I didn't have the $200 food processor or grain mill that the woman in the video had. I ended up with some pretty decent brown rice flour. For me, this is the flour that I want to use as the main flour whenever I am making anything breaded. The problem, my blender wasn't quite what I needed. The woman in the video took about 45 - 60 minutes to make the flour. It took longer with the blender. Next I tried a mini chopper. Ultimate failure.

I finally decided I was going to get the grain mill attachment for my kitchenaid mixer. It was going to cost $99.00. Lowes online said that it was in stock in our local store. It wasn't. Instead, what they had is nice Mr. Coffee coffee grinder for $29.95. When I got home, I tried it. I had it figured out quickly. It works. Set it to fine and only fill it up halfway. You can sift the flour after grinding to remove any large pieces that might have gotten through (something even the video lady with the fancy machine had to do). I use this mostly as breading flour.  But I still kept one step from the woman in the video, I sifted the flour.  It was pretty much just like when I used the blender and much faster. Thank you Mr. Coffee!

Some of my next blogs will have breads, crackers, cookies, corn dogs, Mac and cheese, and more!

Happy Gluten Free Living!