Most flour that you see in the store is made from wheat, but you can use all sorts of ingredients to make flour. For instance, glutinous rice flour is popularly used in Asian cuisine.
If you have never tried glutinous rice flour before, you may be wondering what glutinous rice flour is. I did the research, and here is what I found!
What Is Glutinous Rice Flour?
Glutinous rice flour is rice flour created from short-grain or long-grain sweet glutinous rice grains. Typically, glutinous rice flour has a neutral flavor and is very starchy when used. Most people use glutinous rice flour to make mochi and other sweet desserts, but you need to mix glutinous rice flour with other types of flour for baking.
Do you want to learn if glutinous rice flour has gluten, what the difference between glutinous rice flour and rice flour is, and what you can use instead of glutinous rice flour? Keep reading!
What Is Glutinous Rice Flour Made Of?
Glutinous rice flour is made from cooked then dehydrated short-grain or long-grain sweet rice kernels that are ground finely.
Normally, glutinous rice flour is made from white glutinous rice kernels, but other variants can be made from black or brown glutinous rice.
What Does Glutinous Rice Flour Taste Like?
Typically, glutinous rice flour has a very neutral flavor. While some people may call glutinous rice flour “sweet rice flour,” glutinous rice flour is often associated with sweet recipes but is not sweet by itself.
What Is Glutinous Rice Flour Used For?
Despite having the name “flour,” glutinous rice flour is often used more like starch instead of flour in baking to add more moisture to various baked goods.
While glutinous rice flour is not sweet, most people use glutinous rice flour to create sweet dishes such as Hawaiian mochi and Japanese mochi.
Moreover, glutinous rice flour can be used to make some gluten-free recipes since glutinous rice flour can thicken sauces, bind baked goods, and more.
However, most people will mix glutinous rice flour with other types of flour when making a gluten-free baking recipe since glutinous rice flour is mostly starchy.
For instance, you may mix sorghum flour, potato starch, and other gluten-free types of flour with glutinous rice flour to make your baking recipe have a better texture.
By adding other types of starches and flour to glutinous rice flour, you will make your recipe less chewy and have a softer, doughier consistency.
Is Glutinous Rice Flour The Same As Rice Flour?
Technically, glutinous rice flour and rice flour are not the same because they are made from different types of rice and have different uses.
Firstly, glutinous rice flour is made from short-grain or long-grain sweet and glutinous rice, and the rice grains are very white before milling.
On the other hand, the rice used to make rice flour is made from medium-grain or long-grain rice that most people eat daily, which is opaque before cooking and milling.
Glutinous rice flour is very sticky and chewy when heated compared to rice flour, which is why rice flour can be used for baking whereas glutinous rice flour has to be mixed with other kinds of flour first.
However, glutinous rice flour and rice flour both tend to separate when you mix them with water. Therefore, you need to mix the flour well when using them in a batter to fix any separation.
Moreover, glutinous rice flour and rice flour are both raw flour, which means you need to cook the flours before consuming them to remove any harmful bacteria.
Can You Use Normal Rice Flour For Mochi?
You should not use normal rice flour to make mochi instead of glutinous rice flour because you will get drastically different results.
Generally, using glutinous rice flour to make mochi creates a very smooth, elastic, and stretchy dough that does not tear easily when pulled apart.
If you were to use normal rice flour to make mochi dough, your dough would be dry, crumbly, and not stretchy.
When you cook mochi dough that is made with normal rice flour, the mochi dough will harden and crumble.
Authentic mochi that is made with glutinous rice flour will be slightly gooey and stretchy after cooking.
Does Glutinous Rice Flour Have Gluten?
Despite the name glutinous, rice flour does not have any gluten because glutinous rice is gluten-free.
However, it is important to check the packaging of your glutinous rice flour before you use glutinous rice flour, especially if you are sensitive or allergic to gluten.
Some manufacturers may produce their glutinous rice flour in factories that create wheat-containing products, which could contaminate the glutinous rice flour with gluten.
What Can I Substitute For Glutinous Rice Flour?
Depending on the recipe, you can easily use potato starch or tapioca starch in your recipe instead of glutinous rice flour.
Normally, you will not have the same texture when using potato starch and tapioca starch, but you will have a similar sticky and chewy consistency that you would get from glutinous rice flour.
If you need glutinous rice flour to thicken a soup or sauce, cornstarch is your best bet since the main purpose of cornstarch is to be a thickening agent.
Check out our other articles to learn what green banana flour is, what Gold Medal flour is, and what gluten-free flour is.
Conclusion
Glutinous rice flour is flour made from glutinous sweet rice, which can be either short-grain or long-grain rice kernels.
Normally, glutinous rice flour is used to create various desserts, such as mochi because glutinous rice flour is very starchy.
If you want to use glutinous rice flour when baking, you need to combine your glutinous rice flour with other types of starches and flour to create a doughier consistency.