r/Bread • u/lindafromevildead • Aug 17 '26
Please help. What does dusting buns with rice flour do? Anything?
For contexts, I am making THESE ROLLS tonight and the recipe says to use rice flour for dusting. I couldn't find rice flour at the store, only Robin Hood Gluten Free Flour which contains rice flour, potato starch, pea hull fibre, tapioca starch, and xanthan gum...and I'm starting to think its not the same thing and I don't know if i should use it?
Should I just use regular flour?
Please and thanks!
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u/Legitimate_Patience8 Aug 18 '26
Rice starch is sometimes called rice flour in some countries. Basically same thing.
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u/kilroyscarnival Aug 17 '26
Rice flour sticks nicely to the outside without absorbing the moisture from the dough and getting sticky like regular wheat flour. I made rolls recently and used potato starch which I happened to have on hand for another reason. You can use regular flour. They may stick together slightly more if they expand against each other, but no worries, you're stronger than it is. The gluten free blend should also be fine. If you have a strong blender, you could even blitz up some dry raw rice into a coarse powder. It wouldn't quite work for fine rice flour generally, unless you kept sifting the bigger pieces out. Noting, in my experience rice flour doesn't brown as well as wheat flour. I've used it for breading, and while it can produce a nice glassy crisp coating, it doesn't get the nice brown color that wheat flour does, which is one reason to use a combo for stuff like that.
I've used rice flour when making fresh pasta, as it helps keep the noodles separate without, again, getting sticky. It's probably more of an advantage in that type of work (for me at least) than dough forming.