Home growing gluten free flour alternatives

We completed our annual seed inventory yesterday and thinking about that in connection with the possibility of making our own gluten free flour has me thinking about what are the best things to plant for that.

Here's what we are presently growing or have seed for, that could be used for flour.

- Chestnuts. We have a LOT of trees that will be producing in a few more years.

- Oats. A friend gave me seed so we grew these for the first time in 2021 and they did great. They were underplanted with a lot of other species in the chestnut rows downhill from swales. Saved the seed and will grow a lot more for ourselves and/or as livestock feed next year, possibly in a separate area to make them easier to harvest. Enough fell into the chestnut rows that they will have self seeded there. Not quite sure how to process for hull removal for human consumption. I have a packet of hull-less seed from Baker Creek that we haven't tried yet.

- Amaranth. Have grain amaranth seed, will plant next year.

- Upland rice. Received two packets of different varieties and very excited to try these next year!

- Wild rice. I have a bag someone gave me for cooking a few years ago. Mot sure if still viable for planting but I have them stratifying in the fridge as an experiment. No idea if this can be milled for grain? Or maybe better just to cook as whole rice if I can grow them.

- Beans. We have literally a dozen or more varieties of beans in the seed stash. What is the best kind for making bean flour?

Anything else people are growing and would recommend?

A couple more.

- Fava beans. How about these for flour? Smaller horse fava type vs broad beans?

- Peas. Got lots of these too. What do people use for flour, is it the dry soup pea type? What about maple peas which we are planting in bulk for soil improvement? Can they do double duty as flour peas?

- Lentils / chickpeas? Contemplating growing some of these from bags purchased at grocery store for food. A local seed company sells seed, which might be a better option, locally adapted.

I'm also planning to start growing non-wheat flour grains in 2022, so I don't have experience to draw on. I will add a few that are on my list but not on yours.

- Flour corn
- Sorghum
- Millet

Thanks, Mark!

I haven't tried growing any of those, either.

Here are a couple more that I've thought of that were not on either of our lists originally:

- Acorns. We have a big Garry oak tree that in mast years produces a good number of nuts.  There's a whole process to remove bitterness, but since this is a white oak species it may not be as bitter as some of the red oaks.

- Quinoa. Also requires a bit of processing.

- Dock. this is basically a weed, so not hard to grow at all. I have dead standing dock plants out in the garden with seeds still on them...I should go grab those seeds and try them out. I let a few of them keep on growing out there because the roots are useful for making an iron preparation.

- Chickpeas. Carried by a local seed company, and I may try next year.

- Buckwheat! The exclamation mark is because this is one we were going to grow anyway, as cover crop. How did I forget this one, I have buckwheat flour in the kitchen.

- Cattails. When we get time to put in ponds, the plan is to try to establish cattails. Cattail pollen makes an easy and quite good flour.

- Teff. I've read this is one that is a lot of work for little yield, but might be worth trying.

- Almonds. I've seen almond trees advertised by some local nurseries, might be worth giving this a go.




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I tried oats, amaranth, and flour corn, plus beans this year.

My oats did well this year. First year, not huge yield, growing hullless oats from a tiny seed packet. I will plant again next year, and keep expanding my seed.  Tasted good when I ate a seed.

Potatoes! Squash! Gluten free baking tastes better and has better texture with a fruit or vegetable included, so I do count these as 'grain' crops for baking. Great yield, easy.

Amaranth - my variety is almost impossible to seperate from the chaff, and black seeded. My plan is to try to buy a white seeded 'flour' variety. Beautiful, I grew it for ornamental purposes the second year, and because it was a reliable source of salad greens.

Flour corn - did well the first year (reasonably), complete crop failure the second year. Very tasty, very easy to process, higher yield per effort than the oats. I will grow again, and see what happens. Corn pancakes were astonishingly tasty.

Beans - I believe making flour involves cooking them to kill 'bean poisins' that taste awful, but I just really like beans for soup. Grew very well, easy, little care, expanded my seed and adapted seeds for my growing conditions for 2 years now, hopefully next year is a decent yield.

I also want to try buckwheat and chickpeas.  Quinoa and  sorghum sadly don't work in my climate, but the flour corn did taste and behave somewhat similarly to sorghum flour.

Catie, I have in the past grown amaranth that were labelled on the seed packets as 'grain amaranth' and 'vegetable amaranth' (for leaf production). I think that's the same thing as callaloo. I didn't harvest either of them for flour as this was years before we had ever heard of gluten free flour or realized it was a solution for the stomach upsets of two family members. And I didn't save seed from them that I recall so I'm wondering now if black versus white seed is a consistent character that differentiates the two kinds. Or is a preference for one or the other just how the colour of the seed affects the look of the bread?

You mentioned wanting to try a flour variety so I'm guessing the one you had trouble harvesting clean seed from must have been the vegetable kind? Or maybe one that was sold as an ornamental?

I was very excited about amaranth flour, but after purchasing it from two different brands, I found the flavor to be very strong. I wound up only using it sparingly in my gluten-free flour mixes, and I have a lot left.

Is anyone using amaranth flour in substantial quantities? Have any good recipes?

I had a really hard time separating my amaranth from the chaff as well. It was definitely a grain variety,  not vegetable, and I don't think seed colour can be used to differentiate the two.  One of my grain varieties is black, one brown, one white. Part of the difficulty is that the seed isn't much heavier than the chaff, so wind winnowing is tricky. I haven't looked very hard, but I haven't been able to find the right sized screen for sifting the seed out, either.

I've heard that amaranth can be hard to mill because the seeds are so tiny. Supposedly, it's hard to get the adjustment on the machine right and once you do it goes really slow. Amaranth is so delicious popped, I think I'll just use it for that or for polenta...if I can even get any to grow for me. It gets going too late in the spring here. The weather gets hot and dry when the amaranth is still too young to handle it.

I didn't get a harvest this year because the heat dome and I just tortured it too much, but I'm trying to breed my pearl millet to be a perfect low/no tech thresher. Pearl millet is the only millet that doesn't have a hard hull, so that's what I'm focusing on. It's also very very tasty.

I would like to grow buckwheat, but I haven't figured that one out either. It always ends up flat on the ground long before the seeds ripen.

With a lot of these gluten free flours I use flaxseed as a binder, so I'm trying to grow more of that. It's another seed I find hard a little to winnow, though.

I try to focus to hulless seeds. I'm not keen on needing to add another process to the mix.

We've been growing Painted Mountain corn for flour for the past four years now. It is really yummy. We aren't gluten free so I mix it with wheat flour for yeasted breads but I also use it straight in quick breads and muffins and biscuits.

We grew buckwheat for the last two years but the first year was a flop. This year was better but not enough to do anything with it. I'm going to try again next year

Andrea Locke wrote:Catie, I have in the past grown amaranth that were labelled on the seed packets as 'grain amaranth' and 'vegetable amaranth' (for leaf production). I think that's the same thing as callaloo. I didn't harvest either of them for flour as this was years before we had ever heard of gluten free flour or realized it was a solution for the stomach upsets of two family members. And I didn't save seed from them that I recall so I'm wondering now if black versus white seed is a consistent character that differentiates the two kinds. Or is a preference for one or the other just how the colour of the seed affects the look of the bread?

You mentioned wanting to try a flour variety so I'm guessing the one you had trouble harvesting clean seed from must have been the vegetable kind? Or maybe one that was sold as an ornamental?

I had a ton of difficulties separating out clean seed because of how tiny it is. I basically only managed enough for replanting. The chaff seemed to stick to them, and be about the same size/weight. The amaranth grain I have bought in stores seems to have bigger seeds, and the seeds are white, not black.  Some research (maybe even on permies) Had me discover that the white seeded varieties tend to have bigger seed that is easier to clean.