Hey, guys.
Doctor Axe here, Doctor of Functional Medicine, Nutritionist.
I'm excited to share with you today how to go gluten-free with cooking flours and baking
flours.
You know, most people today are using things like white flour and wheat flour, which are
terrible for you.
Most of them are bleached.
They contain gluten.
They're hard on your digestive system, and there are a number of side effects from using
white and wheat flour.
There are all-natural, great-tasting flours that have been used for thousands of years,
that you can replace white and wheat flour with.
What I'm going to do is I've actually brought the flours from my personal pantry with me
today.
I'm going to show you the flours that you should be replacing those other flours with.
So I've got two brands here.
One is Bob's Red Mill, and the other one here is The Sprouted Flour Company.
I'm going to get into a few details on why you should do sprouted flours, which are things
like Ezekiel bread or sourdough flours instead.
I'll touch on those in just a minute.
We're going to kick off here talking about coconut flour.
So rather than using other flours, coconut flour is a great replacement to white and
wheat flour.
Coconut flour is high in fiber and healthy fats.
So if you're looking to go lower carb, Paleo, lose weight, burn fat, one of the best things
you can do is start using coconut flour.
The health benefits are fantastic.
So coconut flour actually has a very, very nice texture and really, probably of all the
flours I'll share with you, will probably support fat loss the most and a healthy metabolism.
Just like we know coconut oil has tremendous benefits, coconut flour is another great alternative
you can use in baking.
So, we'll make coconut flour cookies, coconut flour cakes.
I made coconut flour waffles the other day, but coconut flour, a great natural replacement.
If you want some recipe ideas, you can go to our draxe.com page and look up coconut
flour recipes.
Also, go to Pinterest boards, is another great place to look up recipes using coconut flour,
one of my favorite flours.
Another thing you could do is just buy a general gluten-free flour or a gluten-free baking
flour.
This is from Bob's Red Mill.
Basically, they're using garbanzo bean flour.
So bean flour from chick peas, along with sorghum flour and potato starch.
So this is a great gluten-free product that you can use, that again, doesn't contain gluten
in it.
It actually has a great texture.
So this is an all-purpose baking flour.
Typically that's equal to . . . If you're looking for one cup of white flour or one
cup of wheat flour to a natural flour, one cup to one cup equal in this Bob's Red Mill
flour.
By the way, you can find this exact flour in any Whole Foods.
You can find it in almost any local grocery store as well.
So if you go to your local . . . wherever you live, in your area, Piggly Wiggly or Publix
or Meyer or Kroger or Winn-Dixie or whatever you have in your area, they will typically
have this exact bag of Bob's Red Mill.
Now, let's talk a little bit about . . . Let's talk about some sprouted flour.
This is a gluten-free, sprouted, yellow corn flour.
So if you want to make homemade cornbread, this is the flour to use.
Sprouting is basically where you take a grain or a flour, and you soak it anywhere between,
typically, 12 to 48 hours.
That kills off something in the flour called phytic acid.
Phytic acid is what binds to minerals.
So when you consume . . . Let's say you go and buy whole wheat bread today, and you look
on the package, and it says, "Contains riboflavin," which is vitamin B2, "and contains a few other
vitamins."
The truth is you're not absorbing those, because they're bound to phytic acid.
So imagine you have all these vitamins and minerals that are all stuck together.
You eat it, but it just passes right through you.
What happens when you sprout something is it kills off phytic acid, basically what's
binding to the minerals, and now all the minerals and vitamins are now free to where you can
absorb and digest them.
That's why Ezekiel bread is typically known to be healthier than regular bread, or sprouted
grain breads are better than regular breads, because now you can absorb and digest all
the nutrients and the phytic acid is not affecting your body.
It's also really hard to digest, can cause leaky gut, other inflammatory issues in your
body.
So that's why sprouted flours are better.
That's why most the flours I buy are The Sprouted Flour Company.
You can go online and buy them anywhere.
We'll have links here where you can buy them as well.
But again, this is my favorite flour.
This yellow corn flour tortilla, making cornbread with this is absolutely delicious.
This tastes better to me, even than the regular corn flour you're going to use.
This next flour is spelt flour.
Spelt flour, another fantastic flour here that you can see.
It's organic.
It's vegan.
Now, there is some debate where certain spelts tend to be . . . Some people believe they're
gluten-free, others believe they're not.
Either way, we know the sprouting process actually helps you digest.
There are actually some really interesting research where people consumed sprouted flours
that had gluten and actually did completely fine, or with some sourdough bread.
So spelt, another good option.
This is a gluten-free, sprouted oat flour.
Again, if you get these natural oats, they can be gluten-free as well.
So I actually, the other night, made homemade chocolate chip raisin oatmeal cookies with
this exact flour.
You can see that's why it's open here.
This is part of my cooking recipe.
Absolutely loved them.
So if you want to do some oatmeal cookies at home or some recipes with sort of that
oatmeal flavor, this sprouted oat flavor is absolutely fantastic.
It's even better than regular oats in terms of digestibility, the nutrients there, all
the vitamins and minerals you're going to find in oats because it's sprouted.
You're going to digest it much better.
The next flour here is brown rice flour.
This is another gluten-free flour you may consume from Bob's Red Mill there.
Rice flour, we know, tends to be non-allergenic for a lot of people.
A lot of people digest that well.
Even though I do like the sprouted flours more, brown rice flour is fine as well.
Last but not least, is finely-ground, almond meal flour.
Almonds are packed with arginine.
They're high in fiber.
They're high in certain types of healthy fats.
Also, baking, online you're going to find a lot of different recipes with almond flour,
in addition to coconut flour.
Some great Paleo, gluten-free recipes using almond flour.
We actually use this a lot when we're making cookies at home, cakes, and different things
like that when we're actually baking.
We even use this in different meals or even coating for even things like when we're making
chicken tenders and frying different things.
We use a little almond flour as well.
So consider, we actually just went through seven natural, gluten-free flours that you
can replace white and wheat flour with.
I think you're going to see going gluten-free is actually easier than you think.
You're going to reap major, major health benefits from doing so.
So check it out.
Try these gluten-free flours.
If you need some ideas, you can go to the draxe.com recipe section, because these are
the gluten-free flours we use in all of our recipes.
Again, they're easy to get, Amazon.com, my website here, at your local grocery store.
You can now find these flours almost everywhere.
Hey, guys, this has been Dr. Axe, teaching you how to go gluten-free.