The word flour means:
A soft powdery substance that’s made by grinding something down.
THIS IS A FLOUR MADE FROM LAVA ROCK.
THIS IS A FLOUR MADE FROM WOOD.
Most of the time, the word flour is used when talking about food.
Grains like corn, wheat, and rice are basic foods that people eat everyday. Those grains are ground up to make things like bread, tortillas, and noodles. There are many different types of flour, each used in various ways to make food.
CORN, WHEAT, & RICE FLOUR
People use the word flour casually. They don’t always say the kind or type they are using.
You’re asked to grab a bag of flour from the store so a cake can be baked. You sprinkle and pat the chicken with some flour. Mom adds some flour to the pan to thicken the gravy.
Usually, what they’re talking about is wheat flour.
It’s kind of easy to start thinking of flour as wheat. And, most of the time, you’ll be right.
Until you’re not.
The “Flourless” label and why this matters.
People looking to avoid gluten will look for products made without ingredients like wheat, rye, and barley.
If that’s you…this is where you can get tricked:
The word flour is only used when something has been ground into a soft powder.
Flourless means it doesn’t have or use flour.
But, that doesn’t mean a particular ingredient wasn’t used in the making of that product or that it’s gluten-free. It just means the ingredient wasn’t ground into a soft powder.
If you chop wheat seeds, smash wheat seeds, press wheat seeds or do anything other than grind it into a powder, you can label that product flourless.
Flourless is a marketing term. It may be true but it’s misleading.
When looking for items that don’t have gluten (or any ingredient you're trying to avoid) don’t look at the big, shiny words on the package.
Read the ingredient label, that’ll tell you everything you need to know.
And with that, the bamboozlement ends.
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