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Gluten-free flours from Gluten-Free Girl raising Kickstarter dough

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Shauna Ahern, better known in the online world as Gluten-Free Girl, will tell you upfront: You can make gluten-free and grain-free flour blends yourself.

She has this DIY starter guide on her website. But, um, unless you’re an experienced baker with plenty of time for trial-and-error-type experimentation, it looks intimidating. And not a week goes by without readers reaching out to Ahern to ask whether they could just buy Ahern’s blend because they just don’t have the time, or energy, to take the DIY route.

“People kept asking us if we’d sell it, and finally we thought, ‘Well, maybe we should,’” Ahern said.

Ahern and her chef husband, Danny, have launched a Kickstarter campaign to see if there’s enough interest to launch their own line of gluten-free and grain-free flour blends.

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With one week to go, the couple are roughly $10,000 shy of their $79,000 goal.

Ahern said she tried dozens and dozens of variations and permutations to come up with a blend that didn’t rely on binders like xanthan gum, which can cause intestinal distress for some, and flat-out “junk.”

“I’m appalled at how ‘gluten-free’ has now become ‘junk food,’” Ahern said. “You get these flour mixes and cookies where the first ingredients is sugar ... [or] it’s like seven starches trying to replicate white flour.”

Ahern’s all-purpose flour blend is 40% whole grain, for a blend that is higher in protein. It’s made of millet, sweet rice flour and potato starch, all strategically chosen because they steer clear of the eight most common allergens while still creating a “lovely crumb on baked goods,” she said.

It can be substituted, measure for measure, in recipes for cookies, quick breads, muffins and the like. The grain-free flour mix is made of a raw buckwheat and almond flour and arrowroot blend. (Buckwheat, despite its name, is not a grain.)

“We really spent a lot of time on this,” Ahern said. “We said, ‘If we’re going to do this, let’s do something that’s better than anything out there.’ We’ve done the work, so you don’t have to.”

Contributors to the Kickstarter so far are fans of Ahern’s website, dedicated to helping those who want or need to avoid gluten find a way to navigate a world lurking with gluten-filled goodies. And many are harried parents of children with allergies who don’t want them to miss out on those quintessential moments -- such as baking chocolate chip cookies when the mood strikes.

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One funder, in for $1,000, said her contribution was more than just being able to buy Ahern’s blends off a shelf after her daughter was diagnosed with a gluten-sensitivity. “She wrote in and said, ‘You saved my daughter’s life, we love food and we loved baking. You gave us hope.’”

And if the Kickstarter goes as hoped, Ahern said she wants to expand into a pizza dough and bread flours.

I never met a carb I didn’t like. I’m on Twitter @renelynch

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