Sigrid -commentando il post poses a question previously composed and complex, for ease of response, I divide into several parts.
gluten-free flour can simply replace the regular flour?
Meanwhile, a premise: the gluten-free flours are a mixture of many ingredients (some have more than 20), theoretically the potential formulas of GF flours are infinite, in practice are many and very different from each other.
So the answer is "it depends" ... gluten free flour from which you want to use and for what thing if you need to thicken a sauce, make cream puffs or prepare fettuccine-and you have the gluten free flour adaptation is likely that we can make (almost) similar, but if you want to prepare (for example) a donut, or bread, the substitution is not trivial (and if you do not have the flour can be adapted completely impossible).
Are there any precautions to be taken?
Yes
Gluten is a wonderful ingredient for those who can use it.
works both raw and after cooking: raw dough viscoelasticity gives, for easy handling and shaping and holds the gas produced by yeasts and after cooking can have (simultaneously) a crispy crust crumb and a soft, lightweight, elastic and helps maintain the moisture of the product. Gluten
you get an elastic but not sticky dough is manipulated in a completely different way (the "folding" it is unthinkable with a mixture GF), rising time can not be that long (the collapse of the dough is in rapidly), the size of individual pieces should be reduced, the addition of ingredients mixed (semi or otherwise) should be calibrated and tested ... in short, is another world.
interacts with other ingredients into the flour the same way 'normal'? "
No, not at all.
In most cases, the gluten-free flours are more sensitive than glutinous and I would say always, more hygroscopic and "fragile".
To explain in a more immediate and fast everything expressed before, I usually do this example ...
The metaphor of the bucket
Think of a bucket, can be made in different materials: plastic, metal, wood. All
have approximately the same shape (a truncated cone with a handle) and do the same job (contain a certain amount of liquid) but are of different materials that require completely different technology for their construction .. . to plastic will probably be made for casting in a mold / counter or by thermoforming, the metal may have the pieces welded together, while the wooden planks will be glued or nailed ...
You can not think of making a plastic bucket with the technology with which he builds a wooden (or, of course, vice versa), then depending on the subject will choose the first production process.
Our goal is to create an object that preserves the functional Features of another whose "material" we are not allowed to use.
Well, this is our situation, we have to do with raw materials-different-things that are normally made with flour glutinous, trying to reach a result "functional" so similar, in most cases, we must use a different technology.
