The Costs of Gluten-Free Baking: the price tag is not for the weak of heart
First published in Kitchen Tales in Medium on 02/14/2024
Anyone who has been diagnosed as gluten-intolerant or Celiac knows the cost of having to eat gluten-free is not cheap. Add in the fact that almost none of the gluten-free bakery goods come close to the original wheat-based goods' taste and texture, it can be soul-crushing. Especially for those of us who are bread-fiends.
When my doctor and I figured I needed to go gluten-free, commercial gluten-free substitutions were starting to hit the marketplace in greater quantities, but a lot of them left a lot to be desired. When several of my friends had been diagnosed with celiac a few years prior, there was next to nothing on the market for gluten-free baked goods. They had to start experimenting to try and come up with substitutes.
But there is nothing that can truly replace wheat-based bread. Trying to find a substitute is a challenge. Originally, the only commercial gluten-free breads were small loaves that you found in the freezer section. If you were lucky, when you took a couple of pieces out they didn’t have huge holes in the crumb big enough to drive a truck through. Okay, they weren’t quite that bad, but the holes were big enough that anything you put in your sandwich leaked through.
In my neck of the woods on the west side of the country, Franz Bakery started coming out with a line of gluten-free bread that wasn't found in the freezer. My first bite of their Mountain White and I was seriously happy, it was almost what I wanted, though still a bit moist and didn’t soak butter in as well as I liked when I toasted it. But, like all gluten-free bread, the loaves were smaller and pricey.
There is a Franz Outlet shop down in Lewiston where I used to be able to buy the bread for $3.99 a loaf, about half what the regular grocery stores charged. Alas, the prices have risen to almost what the regular store charges, so I don’t buy it very often.
So I decided to get into making my own. I’ve had a lot of good luck with cookies using Bob’s Red Mill all-purpose gluten-free flour, which is legume-based. I had no luck making bread with it, but it was great in my cookies.
Bob’s came out with a 1:1 blend that you could measure just like flour, but it was too much for my budget at the time. Thus, my search was to develop a homemade blend.
I muddled through, coming close to an acceptable mix, but it was never quite right. Then I found a site where the author had some copycat recipes, My local grocery store doesn’t carry sorghum, so I went with recipe number two. I make enough to give me five pounds of flour to work with.
I buy all of my ingredients for the blend in the bulk bin at our local Winco. Buying in bulk costs brings down the costs a bit and you can get the amount you need.
Here are the individual ingredients for the copycat recipe, their price per pound, and the cost per ounce:
Potato Starch $2.78 lb or $.17 oz
Tapioca Starch $1.98 lb or $.12 oz
Brown rice $2.08 lb or $.13
White rice $1.98 lb or $.12 oz
Xantham gum $1.50 lb or .09 oz
Recipe for 5 lbs of homemade flour blend :
White rice flour 46 oz = $7.28
Brown rice flour 14 oz = $1,82
potato starch (flour) 14 oz = $1.68
tapioca starch 7 oz = $0.84
Xantham gum 0.5 oz = $0.045
Five pounds of my homemade GF flour blend comes to $11.65. Which breaks down to $2.38 lb or $0.15 oz.
I decided to compare it with the commercial blend Winco carries in bulk. The bulk bin commercial flour blend is $2.98 lb or $.18 oz. So 5 lbs comes to $14.90.
So, making my blend is a few dollars cheaper, though since I don’t use sorghum flour it isn’t quite a fair comparison. But I imagine it would still come out a bit cheaper than the commercial blend from the bulk bin.
I then decided to see what the cost breakdown would be if I were to buy Bob’s Red Mill 1:1 baking blend. The 44 oz bag runs $9.48 a bag, which works out to $.21 an ounce.
We decided to check and see what a larger bag would cost. The closest place I can buy a 25-pound bag is in the valley at the Chief Store in Clarkston. We go down once a month to hit Costco and a couple of other stores for shopping.
We had scoped it out on a previous trip and checked the price:
The price of a 25-pound bag of Bob’s 1:1 is $55.89. This breaks down to $2.33 lb or $.14 oz.
I just looked up the price for 25 pounds on Bob’s Amazon store. $80.99 a bag!!!! Needless to say, the Chef Store has the better deal.
Comparing the cost of my homemade blend to Bob’s, they are pretty close, even though I don’t have the sorghum flour. The only place I could source it locally is the Co-op and they do run a bit pricy. I suspect that if I did make the copycat recipe for the Bob’s, I would pay more per ounce.
I also thought about the convenience of buying Bob’s over making my own. I like making my own, but I also have limited pantry space for all the containers I need for the various flours. With the Bob’s I can eliminate a number of the flours I need. The only one I need to buy regularly is the brown rice flour. I need it to feed Henry and use it for making gravy.
I also don’t have to run to the store every couple of weeks to buy the individual flours. It would be fine if I came out of the store with just what is on my shopping list, but there is always another thing that jumps in the cart that we didn’t plan on. So the convenience factor of buying the Bob’s tilts the scale toward it. Especially considering how much I go through in a baking session when I am experimenting.
So, for now, I will be using Bob’s 1:1, especially since several recipes call for it specifically. This will give me a chance to try recipes using the flour blend that is called for.
Fingers crossed that the Chef Store keeps it at that price or close. If so, we will probably bite the bullet and pick up two bags next time we are down.
By the way, a new author has joined Medium who has a good article on why gluten-free foods are so expensive.
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