They say you need to bake with love. That’s true, but using the right flour helps a lot, too.

My preferred mix is as simple as 1-2-2-2-3. That is:

100g almond flour
200g millet flour
200g sorghum flour
200g teff flour
300g tapioca flour (also known as tapioca starch)

The almond adds moisture, balancing out the dry, crumbly nature of something baked with too much starch. Teff has a similar gummy quality to gluten, lending structure and a nice crust to your baking. Sorghum and millet are both excellent wheat substitutes, while adding tapioca to the mix lightens it and gives you the right kind of texture. Weigh out each flour, stir well together until thoroughly blended and store in something airtight. You now have a soft and, well, floury mix that you can use instead of regular plain flour in most recipes. Even better, it’s pretty good for you: everything but the tapioca is high in fibre, while the teff provides a good source of both calcium and iron, and the millet is rich in magnesium.

You’ll need to add a binding agent – I swear by ground flax seed; xanthum gum is another popular choice – and you won’t have much luck substituting this as is in a bread recipe that depends on a yeast/gluten reaction. But for cakes, cookies, muffins, pies and pancakes, this gives great results.

It’s more of a suggestion than a prescription: I’ll often use garbanzo/chickpea flour or brown rice in place of the sorghum or millet. If I want a denser, more whole-grainy quality, I’ll throw in some buckwheat. Arrowroot and sweet rice flour are both decent alternatives to the tapioca. And while I get my best results with ground almonds, I’ll use oat flour instead if baking for someone with a nut allergy.

Alternatively, Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour is fantastic, as is King Arthur Gluten-Free Whole Grain Flour Blend.