Wheat allergies and gluten intolerances could prevent you from using white flour made from wheat in your cooking. Or, perhaps you want to make a cake, but all you have is almond flour. No matter the reason, almond flour can successfully replace white flour in most recipes. You can even make your own almond flour from whole nuts. Due to the high fat content of the almond flour, making it fresh when you need it prevents the flour from becoming rancid in storage.
Create almond flour by placing sliced, blanched almonds 1/2 cup at a time into a food processor or a spice grinder. Grind the same amount of sliced almonds as you need in almond flour. For instance, if you need 2 cups of almond flour, grind 2 cups of sliced, blanched almonds. Use several short pulses to grind the nuts. Do not let the grinding blade run without stopping or you will make almond butter.
Replace all of the white flour in coatings, breadings and batters with an equal amount of almond flour.
Combine almond flour with other flours to replace the total amount of white flour used in baking. Use almond meal up to 1/3 of the total white flour and use other gluten-free flours for the other 2/3 of the total. For example, you can use 1/3 cup rice flour, 1/4 cup potato starch and 2 tbsp. tapioca starch with 1/3 cup of almond flour to replace 1 cup of white flour in a recipe.
To replicate gluten's elasticity in the dough, add 3/4 tsp. of xanthan gum to almond flour in bread recipes, 1/2 tsp. in cakes, or 1/4 tsp. in cookies per 1 cup of white flour replaced with almond meal.
Tip
Keep leftover almond flour in an airtight bag in the freezer until you need to use it.