If you've recently decided to adhere to a gluten-free diet, you may be unsure of how to separate the items that belong in your gluten-free pantry and those that need to be given away to a neighbor. You'll want to go through your pantry and remove all items that are questionable in integrity and replace them with tried and true gluten-free products. Then you can try out new products that have been tolerated by some but proved questionable for others, eventually filling your pantry with items that work for you. Because some of these items have limited shelf lives, you'll want to invest in containers that can seal tightly and label the items inside with the contents, purchase date and expiration date. This will extend your shelf life and protect you against foods going bad.
The following items are good gluten-free staples that should be tolerated by most people with celiac disease or who have decided to eat gluten-free:
Gluten-free flours
You'll want to stock up on an assortment of gluten-free grains so you can experiment with bread and dessert recipes. You'll usually need to mix a few gluten-free grains to get anything resembling traditional breads or cakes or cookies, so invest in a few of these: arrowroot flour, acorn flour, buckwheat flour, corn meal, corn flour, masa flour, potato flour, rice flour, tapioca flour, pea flour, yam flour and sorghum flour. Once you discover a good basic bread flour mix or cake flour mix, you'll want to make up some of that grain mix and store it, labeled properly, in your pantry.
Gluten-free grains
For side dishes or accompanying carbohydrates in meals, you'll need some gluten free grains you can quickly use in meal plans. Stock up on amaranth, quinoa, corn grits, rice, wild rice and maize.
Gluten-free baking goods
Since so many commercially produced baking items have gluten in them in one form or another, you're going to have to learn to bake without the use of premade mixes. Fill your pantry with the following baking products: baking soda, baking powder, canola oil (rapeseed oil), carob bean, corn syrup, corn starch, corn sweeteners, cotton seed oil, gelatin, honey, tapioca and vanilla. All of these items are safe and are great for basic cooking recipes.
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