<<Disclaimer: Verify this information before applying it to your situation.>>

Apparently I am the only one that did not know they are different!!  Thank
you all for responding.  Here are a few of the replies, along with some
suggestions...
*They are different. Use the sweet rice only when the recipe calls for it.
I find it in a one pound box like powdered sugar in regular grocery
stores,the local asian market.
*My favorite flour mixture has sweet rice flour and rice flour. The sweet
rice flour adds stickiness to our food so the cookies do not fall apart.
DRY FLOUR MIX
2 c brown rice flour 2 c white rice flour
1 1/2 c sweet rice flour 1 1/3 c tapioca starch or flour
2/3 c corn starch 1/2 c rice bran or rice polish
2 tsp xanthan gum
Sift together 3 or 4 times and store in canister. Use 1 c
of this mixture when recipe calls for 1 c wheat flour.
Works very well in cookies, bars, cakes - even rolled out
sugar cookies.
Jan from ND
*Sweet rice is a special kind of rice, and flour made from it is a little
different from plain white rice flour, as brown rice flour is yet another
kind of rice flour, and also tastes a bit different. I never cooked with
sweet rice flour, but I hear it has a smoother texture and better taste
than regular white rice flour, which I find gritty, and no longer use
except for tempura (makes great crispy tempura!).
*sweet rice flour is made from sticky rice. It's more glutinous and, well,
sticky. If you can't find it, use something else to increase the stretch
in your recipe, like a little xanthan gum, extra egg, egg replacer, some
gelatin, some powdered milk...
*Sweet rice flour has more thickening power.
*sweet rice flour is like rice starch, as opposed to flour. Probably a
similar substitute would be cornstarch...
*"sweet rice flour" is actually from a different rice than white rice
flour. I do know that when I tried to use some it seemed to need A LOT
more liquid than would have been the case with regular flour; usually I
stick with brown rice flour, and have found that adding two TBS cornstarch
per cup (so total comes to one cup) really works nicely, especially using
the xanthan gum
*Sweet rice flour has a finer grind and comes from Asian sticky rice. Your
end product will be a lot less gritty.
*Sweet rice flour is the same thing as glutinous rice flour, but not the
same thing as white rice flour. Basically, they are all made of rice (and
all are white, meaning without the external bran, or rice polish), but
from different varieties of rice. Sweet or glutinous rice flour is
stickier, it has a more viscous starch component. So usually you wouldn't
want to subsitute one for the other, as the texture of your baked goods
would be different from what is hoped for.
*I use regular rice flour with excellent results in cookies. Montina
(available online) is also a nice-tasting flour. It is Indian Rice Grass
and is slightly sweet. Expensive, but you don't need much to make a
difference. Sweet rice flour (sometimes also called sticky rice flour or
glutinous rice flour) is generally generally found in Asian groceries.
It's made from sweet or sticky rice, called mochi in Japanese, which is a
very short grain rice with a sweet flavor. White rice flour is just
ordinary white rice. They have different textures and flavors, and
definitely are not interchangeable. The sweet rice flour helps provide
some of the elasticity that is otherwise lacking in gf baked goods.
*Be careful though, the Mochiko brand carried in supermkts is now
nutritionally fortified with a spray of wheat to improve nutritional
values. I could not understand why I was getting a gluten reaction from my
bread that I had been making for 5 yrs until it was disclosed by the list.

* Visit the Celiac Web Page at www.enabling.org/ia/celiac/index.html *