A couple years ago my parents invested in a flour grinder. Now they grind everything but the kitchen sink! We share our Missouri grown corn and soybeans with them and they share the flour from their Kansas grown wheat and milo.

Our family just likes the pleasure in baking foods from the homegrown grains. Others are interested in specialty flours due to allergies or certain health conditions.

Adapting recipes for different flours takes patience. Each type of flour functions a little differently in relation to the other ingredients.

Wheat flour is the most common flour needing to be replaced in a recipe. When substituting other types of flour such as rice, rye, or soy for wheat flour, you’ll find that all flours are not equal and you’ll need to do some adapting.

When a recipe calls for one cup of wheat (white) flour, use the following amounts of other flours.

Oat flour tends to produce a somewhat sticky feel in the mouth. Potato flour and soy flour are best used in combination with other flours. Rice flour gives a distinct graininess to baked products. Rye flour is frequently used although it has a dark color and a distinctive flavor. It has a slight amount of gluten, and some people who need to avoid gluten cannot tolerate it. Barley and oat flours also contain a slight amount of gluten.

Since wheat flour contains gluten which gives structure to baked goods, don’t expect the same texture with other types of flours. What you want to focus on is taste.

When trying to substitute some of the flours in a recipe, I start with replacing only one-half the wheat flour with the other whole grain flours. Some have turned out great. In other recipes, I’ve had to replace only one-third of the amount.

In making your own substitutions, experimentation is necessary and some failures should be expected. Think of a FLOP in these terms.

F = Fix it
L = Live with it
O = Or
P = Pretend you planned it that way!

Source: Baking for People with Food Allergies, USDA HG 147