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Dear Friends,

Just a note to let you all know the result of my baking experiments with
various brands of rice flour.  I began with Bob's Red Mill white rice flour
and the package had a wonderful muffin recipe on it which I was using and
making delicious muffins I ate for breakfast (and snacks, since I usually
added chocolate chips!)  Well, I realized I was still seeming to have some
minor problems and that I had never called Bob's.  When I did call them, I
just wasn't sure the woman knew what she was talking about, so I called
another company: Arrowhead Mills.  They also do not have dedicated lines for
GF products (which I think isn't that great), but this woman went into great
detail about how they take apart their equipment on Fridays and clean it all
with steam and high powered blasts of air and how they produce most of their
GF products on Monday morning after this cleaning process.  They also do not
release the first 50 pounds or so of GF flour they produce for sale just to
make sure they aren't contaminated.  I thought this was about as good a method
as one could ask for (except for dedicated lines) and decided to support this
company.  Unfortunately, the flour isn't as fine and I couldn't make my
muffins work with it.  They sunk in the middle and were very hard and
crumbley.  At first I couldn't believe that it was "just" the brand of flour
that made such a difference, but that was the only thing which changed.  I
have now switched back to Bob's Red Mill (since I think my distress was
actuaLly caused by something else anyhow) and am having again wonderful
results.  I guess the best plan would be to order products from a company
which does not make any gluten products, but while I am researching that and
considering it, this is my plan.

As far as those of you who suggested I try an asian foods store, I did go to
one on Friday.  It was very busy and I didn't want to ask anyone because
everyone was doing already a hundred things, but I didn't see large bags of
rice flour.  Also, this store is very out of my way (sometimes it's worth it
to pay more for a product which is more convenient!)  Though I looked up more
asian stores in the phone book and will probably try another one soon.

Thanks for all your advice and I wish you all a happy week!

-Christie in Chandler, AZ