Make Your Own Buckwheat Flour (Gluten-Free!)

When it comes to gluten-free baking, I'm in love with buckwheat flour.

I know it sounds scary because it has "wheat" in the name.  But according to Wikipedia:

Buckwheat is a plant cultivated for its grain-like seeds...Despite the name, buckwheat is not related to wheat, as it is not a cereal/grass; instead, buckwheat is related to sorrel, knotweed, and rhubarb."

Raw buckwheat groats are cheap and easy to find in our outdoor market.  They look like this:

To make buckwheat flour, I just put them in our blender and grind until fine (about 1/2 cup at a time).

Pros of buckwheat flour: 

• You can substitute it for flour in any recipe.  
• You don't have to spend time mixing a lot of different flours together.  
• The finished products have a better texture than those made with rice flour.
• It's much more nutritious than white rice flour.

Cons of buckwheat flour:

• The finished products definitely have that healthy, made-with-whole-grain taste (which I actually like, but not everyone does.)

So far, we've used buckwheat flour successfully to make crackers, bread, muffins, gingerbread, pizza crust, quiche crust, and pancakes.

Here's a favorite breakfast recipe using buckwheat:

Buckwheat-Banana Muffins

Ingredients:

1 1/2 C buckwheat flour

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

3 mashed bananas

1/2 C sugar

1 egg

1/3 C butter

Directions:  Mix dry ingredients together.  Mix wet ingredients together.  Mix everything together and pour into muffin tin.  Bake at 175 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit) 25-30 minutes.  Makes about 8 muffins.