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I'm a Type 2 diabetic who loves bread and pasta, so I'm exploring ways of making my favorite foods more "blood sugar friendly", hoping that I can re-integrate them into my diet in a healthy way.

Compared to all-purpose flour, quinoa flour has higher amounts of dietary fiber and protein and lower amount of carbs, making it a great candidate, nutritionally, but I also know that it (like many other "ancient grains") doesn't have the gluten that gives all-purpose flour so many of its useful characteristics.

Unfortunately, given the popularity of "gluten-free", the vast majority of search results that I get for "quinoa flour" and "gluten" end up taking me to recipes/articles for gluten-free cooking/baking, which is really the opposite of what I am looking for.

So does anyone have any tips on or experience with making quinoa flour into a more suitable standalone replacement for all-purpose flour? Add gluten for structure/airiness? More liquid to avoid dryness? Anything else?

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    Upvoted for being an interesting question, but I am somewhat pessimistic here. Starch is a big part of what makes AP flour behave like AP flour, so without adding it back, you may be out of luck. But I'd love to see answers which prove me wrong!
    – rumtscho ♦
    Nov 30, 2017 at 22:08

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Quinoa and Amaranth are from the same family and are quite similar in makeup and constitution. You’ll probably want to add some stabilizers and extra binding power to make up for the lack of gluten.

This recipe for amaranth bread adds rice flour, tapioca starch, arrowroot, and xanthan gum - which in my opinion is a bit of overkill. I would probably stick with just agar-agar for the mouthfeel, egg yolk for extra binding and xantham only if it’s too crumbly.

And on a side note, lightly toasted quinoa with bittersweet cocoa powder is a great (and classical if not downright tasty) addition to your breads. Good luck

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  • So I guess my question would be, if I'm open to adding in gluten, are those stabilizers/binders still needed to cover the other differences between quinoa flour and regular flour? Sadly, while I'm very familiar with quinoa as a whole grain, I really don't know anything yet about its properties and characteristics as a flour. :/
    – talemyn
    Dec 1, 2017 at 19:38
  • And thanks for the tip on the toasted quinoa and bittersweet cocoa . ;)
    – talemyn
    Dec 1, 2017 at 19:39
  • @talemyn - well you could kind of think of it like a powdered nut, which will turn into a gooey paste that is so heavy and sticky that it won’t rise very easily so most appropriate in its pure form would be as a flatbread.
    – Nothingismagick
    Dec 2, 2017 at 4:14
  • Oh, interesting . . . I had assumed that it would behave like other grain flour, just without the built in "structural support". Sounds more and more like I may need to do some experimenting. 🙂
    – talemyn
    Dec 4, 2017 at 15:21
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I make mock AP flour by blending 650 grams of quinoa flour with 80 grams of wheat gluten. I use this flour for yeast Ed bread recipes. For cake (strongly flavored cake) I combine 350 grams of 12% fat defatted peanut flour, 50 grams of wheat gluten, 60 grams of pectin powder, 30 grams of powdered lecithin.

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