There are 46 flours in the HTGF flour library, and one obvious question: which one, for what? This is the honest matchmaking page — what to reach for when tonight’s plan is bread, pizza, pancakes, or a sauce that refuses to thicken. Each section below names the flours that genuinely earn their place, then links you into the library for ratios, flavour notes and buying advice.
Best flours for bread
Buckwheat and sorghum are the bread builders — they bring the body, flavour and browning that bread misses most without wheat. Teff is the choice for dark, malty loaves with real character. Whichever base you pick, pair it with a starch and don’t skip psyllium husk: it’s what lets the dough hold its shape and the crumb stay springy instead of crumbling. If you only ever bookmark one combination, make it buckwheat, tapioca starch and psyllium — it produces a genuinely good everyday loaf with no exotic shopping required.
Best flours for pizza
Chew is the whole goal. Fine rice flour with a generous share of tapioca starch gets you stretch and blistered edges, with psyllium again doing the structural work for a slice you can actually fold. Cassava flour is the dark horse here — it makes a surprisingly good thin crust almost on its own. Whatever base you choose, a hot oven and a preheated tray or stone matter more for gluten-free pizza than they ever did for wheat: the crust needs that early blast of heat to set before it can dry out.
Best flours for pasta
For fresh pasta at home, sweet rice flour is the key ingredient — it brings the elasticity that egg dough needs to roll thin without tearing. Buckwheat is the heritage option, with centuries of soba and Valtellina’s pizzoccheri behind it. And chickpea flour makes a sturdy, high-protein pasta that holds a sauce better than it has any right to.
Best flours for cakes
Finely milled rice flour cut with potato starch is the classic base for a light sponge. Almond flour gives you moist, rich cakes that stay fresh for days — Italy’s torta caprese never needed wheat in the first place. A spoonful of sorghum rounds out the flavour in vanilla and spice cakes, taking the edge off the blandness pure rice blends sometimes carry.
Best flours for cookies
Oat flour makes cookies taste like childhood — soft, slightly sweet, completely convincing (certified only; see the oats guide). Almond flour delivers chewy middles, while rice flour plus a starch gives shortbread its proper snap. Feeling adventurous? Chestnut flour turns autumn baking into something special.
Best flours for pancakes
Buckwheat is the pancake flour with centuries of references on its CV — Breton galettes and Russian blini were never wheat to begin with. Oat flour makes soft, fluffy American-style stacks, and teff is your gateway if you’re tempted toward injera territory. Pancakes are also the lowest-stakes place to test an unfamiliar flour: a single pan, ten minutes, and you know whether it earns a spot in your pantry.
Best flours for thickening
This is starch country. Corn starch handles everyday sauces and gravies with about half the amount of flour a recipe asks for. Tapioca sets fruit pie fillings glossy and clear instead of cloudy. Arrowroot suits delicate sauces that shouldn’t boil hard, and sweet rice flour is the roux flour for proper, old-fashioned gravy. The technique to remember: mix starches with cold liquid first, then stir the slurry into the hot pan — straight into heat, they clump.
Best flours for frying
Rice flour fries lighter and crispier than wheat ever did — tempura worked this out long before any of us needed it to. Cut it with corn starch for coatings that shatter. Cornmeal and masa harina make sturdy southern-style crusts, and chickpea flour is the pakora and fritter batter that needs no egg. One quiet bonus: frying at home in your own oil is one place cooking gluten-free gets safer than eating out — shared restaurant fryers remain caution territory (see cross-contact).
Where to go next
Every link above goes deeper — substitution ratios, what each flour tastes like, what to buy and what to skip. Or browse the full flour library by category: grain flours, nut flours and starches are good places to wander. Forty-six flours sounds like a lot until you realise most of them solve a problem wheat never could.
The short version
- Bread and pizza: buckwheat or sorghum base, plus starch, plus psyllium husk.
- Pasta: sweet rice flour for elasticity; buckwheat for tradition.
- Cakes and cookies: fine rice flour with starch for lightness; almond or oat flour for flavour and chew.
- Pancakes: buckwheat was born for this.
- Thickening and frying: the starches win — corn, tapioca, arrowroot.
Every coeliac kitchen is different — adapt to your own tolerance and your medical team’s advice.