Grind your own Oat Flour

I love oat flour as a tasty, nutritious, fiberful addition to baking. Lately, I have had great difficulty in finding it at my local grocery stores. The only stores that carry it are the natural foods stores, who seem to think their customers will pay an arm and a leg for it.

So I started grinding my own. It’s much less expensive, and I can grind it fresh when I need it. I can get an 18 ounce container of organic old-fashioned oats at my grocer for $1.99 and turn it into organic oat flour presto!

And, by the way, that 18 ounce container of oats ground into oat flour will completely fill a large 26 ounce glass peanut butter jar. I always clean and save those jars because the large canning jars are so expensive and they are the perfect size for storing smaller bags of specialty flours.

You can use a food processor or coffee/spice grinder for this. Just simply load old-fashioned oats into the grinder or food processor, filling it about halfway. Grind to desired consistency. I like mine just a little on the coarse ground side, for adding texture to baked goods.

You can keep processing it to get it as finely ground as you want. If you need it really finely ground, pass the ground oats through a sieve and re-grind what’s left in the sieve. Keep doing this until you get the consistency you need.

Remember that oat flour doesn’t contain gluten so when adding it to baked goods like cookies, brownies, cakes or muffins, only substitute about a third or fourth of the flour called for in the recipe. Too much and you might have crumbly baked goods.

I use oat flour frequently in my regular and gluten free baking. While the oats I purchase are not certified gluten free, my daughter doesn’t have a problem with them. If you are baking gluten free for someone and aren’t sure if they can have oats, it’s best not to use oat flour. Use a certified gluten free baking mix, or make your own using certified gluten free flours.

My standard formula for making gluten free baking mix at home is a 2 to 1 to 1 ratio of brown rice flour, other gluten free flour (like sorghum, coconut, or buckwheat) and starch (potato or tapioca flour). For example, if I have a recipe that requires 2 cups of flour, I would use a mixture of 1 cup brown rice flour, 1/2 cup sorghum flour and 1/2 cup potato starch.

For SpoonGood recipes using oat flour, click on the menu icon in the upper left hand corner. Scroll down to search and enter the term “oat flour” and the brilliant WordPress search widget will show you every recipe published here that references oat flour!