Alternative Flours

Our family's allergies are complex enough that there is very little pre-packaged foods we can eat. We buy mostly raw and then make our own foods weekly/daily. We make all of our own baked goods. Pancakes, breads, muffins, cookies, crackers, etc.

This means we go through a lot of flour. We cannot  have wheat. This leaves other flours as our only options. My daughter and husband can have oat and almond flour. My son cannot have either of those. He can have rice and coconut flour. My husband and daughter cannot have those...You see the issue?

We've settled on using rice and oat flours as our staple flours and the adding the others in to augment, get better textures, etc. We were elated to find this 25lb bag of rice flour for $22 at a local Winco. (The other local Winco doesn't carry it, but I haven't asked them to either since the other store is so close.) We did not have as much luck finding cheap oat flour. It ranges around $5 - $10 per 22 oz bag.

My husband had a brilliant idea. He'd been really wanting a Vitamix or a BlendTec blender. He wondered if we could take oats and grind our own flour. We tried it first with a borrowed coffee grinder. It worked! So we got a deal on a BlendTec from B&P Restaurant Equipment Co. in WA and have been making our own oat flour since. We get the 25lb bag of oats and use them or grind them as we go. The oats are around $1/lb.