A bit about gluten-free flours and making your own mixes

I've only been doing this for less than a year, so I probably still have a lot to learn.
Here are a few things I've learned...

1) I keep most of my flours in the freezer, I have one of each in an ice bin that I carry up when I'm going to bake something or make up a mix. I only keep a few flours in the cupboard, sweet rice flour, bean flours (not sure about this!), corn flours, Expandex and Montina

2) chia gel is indespensible - I buy chia seeds (yep, think chia pet!), grind up 2 Tbsp of chia seeds in my little coffee grinder on the finest grind and slowly stir into 1 cup of water. I store this in the fridge for approx. 2 weeks before it goes sour. I use it in ALL of my baking (including cookies! - ummm, pancakes are not baking...). 3 Tbsp in a loaf of bread, 2 Tbsp in a pizza recipe for 2 8/9" pizzas, 2 Tbsp in my cookie recipe.

3) Making mixes has saved my sanity. I just started working away from home this past October, so I'm so happy I had the summer to learn a lot about gluten free baking. Basically I take whatever recipe I'm premixing, 6 medium or large ziplock bags, my ice bin of flours, whatever ingredients I need from the cupboard (salt etc.), and measuring spoons and cups. Then I sit at the table, either so I can watch TV, or listen to an audiobook.
I then go through my ingredient list, adding one ingredient at a time to all the bags, so, first 1 cup of sorghum flour to each bag, then the next ingredient. I do not add the xanthan gum, or yeast, or egg white powder (I might have egg whites in the fridge or I might want to pre-whip the egg whites).
I have 2 exceptions to the 1 bag per mix rule: pancake mix and muffin mix (I include the xanthan gum in that one and I shake it before measuring out).

4) I love Expandex (modified tapioca flour), it has made my bread have a nicer crust and crumb and my cookies and other baked are just nicer. I use 1/4 cup in my bread mix (1 loaf) and in my cookie mix (which makes about 3 dozen cookies).

5) I use Ziplock bags for all my flour mixing and mixes so that
a) I can reuse
b) I can label with masking tape (e.g. add xanthan gum - I'm never sure, and 1/3 cup sweet rice flour - I ran out while premixing)
c) I can shake and mix the flour to my heart's content

6) I use a variety of flours when baking gluten-free. This is because these flours all taste different and have different properties. That said, my bread still tasted gluten free.

7) I add sprouts to my bread 'dough' - hand mixed in just before putting in pan to rise. I have a ton of seeds (ok, a box) now, from Enviroharvest, the majority are Mumms seeds that I first saw in my local health food store. Now my bread tastes like vegetables and has the odd 'hair' in it, and it's so much more nutritious! It really does taste good.

OK, and as I've been working sort of full-time since October (definitely since mid December), that's my reason (this time :) ), for not posting.

I'm sure I didn't cover everything I do, but I was thinking about sharing this, as I am making up bread mixes today. Oh, when I started out, I made 6 bags of all my favorite mixes (pizza, cookies and bread) and now I make whichever I need when I run out.

Grapes???? GF Bread that really rose!

Last week I was having a tough time baking bread... same recipe, kept overproofing, and I'd only get a slice or so from the loaves.

After the 3rd failure, ( I had been modifying a few things as I went), was using Expandex and montina flour to make things work better, along with a cold oven to start (really doesn't make sense to do if your bread rises so fast). My bread was rising in 30 min. or less - I couldn't get distracted... I finally realized I had only ever made this bread as a sourdough type and had never made it with yeast.

So I gave up and went with another recipe, my other go to gluten free bread recipe that I'm pretty happy with - but since I've never had a problem with it, I thought I'd try the grapes (just squeezed out 2 green grapes and proofed the yeast with that), oh and why not whip the egg whites? so now I'm not sure if it was the egg whites or the grapes that produced this stupendous rise (common consensus is the grapes)... the original recipe said to use 2 8x4 or a bigger 10" pan, but my dough was too small so I used a 9x5 pan, but now...

This was not over-proofing - the dough actually rose that high in the oven - it went in the oven just barely at the top of the pan, and due to the aforementioned failures that week, I had preheated the oven - ok, one bubble at the top in the back, but it couldn't support the height - of course... But it was the best bread so far - just weird size of slices...

BTW, you should have heard me laughing when I saw this and HAD to take the picture, all week long things puffed up extraordinarily when I made them, even pancakes...