Michelle from The Willing Cook emailed in the following tip:
When my husband tested positive for a wheat allergy a few years, I thought about trying the pre-packaged flours, but couldn’t come to terms with the price. We decided to start experimenting with making our own wheat-free flours. Instead of investing in an actual grain mill, we had a small coffee bean grinder that we thought might work well for grinding up whole grains.
We first tried old-fashioned oats ground in our coffee grinder as a substitute for wheat flour in a dessert recipe. We were amazed at how well the substitution worked and how delicious the outcome was!
Next, we tried grinding white rice for breading on fish. The flavor and crispiness were great!
We have since ground brown rice, chickpeas, tapioca pearls, blanched almonds and even Rice Chex! An old dusty coffee bean grinder and a little experimenting opened a whole new world for our frugal allergy family.
While the coffee bean grinder has worked well for us, one of the drawbacks is that the grinder we use is only a 1/2 cup size. If you need a large quantity of flour, it’s a little time-consuming to only be able to grind a half cup at a time. Also, if you use the coffee bean grinder for coffee beans, as well, you’ll want to make sure that you clean it really well when switching between grinding coffee beans and grinding flour.
The savings in grinding your own flours versus purchasing them pre-ground are significant:
- Old Fashioned Oats purchased at Aldi and ground yourself are around 47 to 80% less expensive than purchasing pre-packaged Oat Flour from Amazon.
- Rice purchased at Aldi and ground yourself is around 50% less expensive than purchasing pre-packaged Rice Flour from Amazon.
- Whole Chickpeas purchased at an Asian Grocer and ground yourself are around 90% less expensive than purchasing them pre-ground from Amazon.
