The celiac disease or gluten intolerance makes many people will be forced to eliminate consumption of wheat flour from their diets. As a substitute to this type of food, there are gluten-free flours such as almonds or rice, among many other alternatives.

These flours are often used to make different types of dough, both in breads and pastries, but although both are gluten-free they have some important differences. Know its characteristics and choose the gluten-free flour that best suits your dishes and your needs.

Differences between both gluten-free flours

• Origin: while almond flour comes from nuts, as with other flours such as chestnuts, rice flour has its origin in cereals, just as in the case of maize, teff or corn flours. Son.
  Although all of them are examples of gluten-free flours and suitable for people with this type of intolerance, it can be a notable difference for those who follow other types of nutritional plans in which the consumption of cereals is eliminated or restricted. As an example, we can talk about the case of the paleodieta.

• Use in the kitchen: if what we are looking for is a flour to make desserts or breads, we can also find differences between both. Rice flour is often used more as a thickener of sauces than as a proper ingredient for doughs, since the leaching, or rise of dough, with rice flour is more complicated than, for example, in the case of almond flour , much more recommended for the preparation of pasta and breads and that, in addition, confers more flavor and is very stable at high temperatures.
  Even so it is easy to find pastry recipes that include rice flour among its ingredients. In these cases it is usually recommended to mix part of this flour with another similar amount of gluten-free alternatives.
• Nutritionally: rice flour is notable for containing a high starch content, retaining many of the initial properties of rice: minerals, proteins and B vitamins, mainly.
  As for the almond flour, we can highlight its high content of potassium and its low sodium composition, a factor to be taken into account in the regulation of blood pressure. In addition, its consumption is highly recommended in diabetic people due to the regulating power of blood glucose.

As you can see, two flours without gluten but with different properties and benefits that you can alternate depending on your needs and the dishes or recipes that you are going to prepare.

Legume flours: the great unknown

When we talk about gluten-free flours, usually comes to mind some alternatives that we have spoken whose origin is usually of cereals, pseudocereals (as in the case of quinoa or amaranth flours ) or nuts .

But in addition to this diversity, there is another type of flours from legumes and known as leguminous flours. In this new subtype we fit varieties such as chickpea flour and soybean meal.

In the case of soy flour we must emphasize that it is a heart-healthy food, and high in phosphorus and protein. Its use is usually more oriented to the preparation of doughs and breads.