Buying gluten free flour in bulk is convenient and cost-effective. When you’re doing a lot of gluten free baking, it’s lovely to have a 25 lb bag of brown rice flour at hand, so that you’re not constantly running to the store. The price of a large bag of flour, even with shipping costs, is usually less than you’d pay at the local grocery too. In some cases, much less.
However, there is a bit of upfront work required in order to figure out the best place to order your bulk flours. Obviously you want to make sure that the flour IS gluten free. But even after doing that, there are many online stores that offer Gluten Free Flour in bulk, so you have to do a bit of comparison shopping.
I recently took a look around to find the least expensive place to buy a 25 lb. bag of GF brown rice flour. Here’s what I discovered.
Where to Buy Gluten Free Flour In Bulk
In the past I’ve found the best price deals when I buy a 25 lb bag of flour, rather than cases of smaller bags. Three of the online stores that I checked carried 25 lb bags of brown rice flour: Amazon, Bob’s Red Mill, and Azure Standard.
Amazon:
Amazon is not usually my first choice for bulk flour buying, but every now and then you’ll find a great deal. Check out the Lundburg brown rice below. That’s an amazing price!!
Lundberg Eco-Farmed Brown Rice Flour, 25-Pound
New Grains Gluten Free Sweet Brown Rice Flour (25 lbs)
Great River Organic Milling Gluten Free Brown Rice Flour, 25-Pound
This rice flour is organic and more costly. The price is $63.78 and shipping is free with Amazon Prime. Cost per lb is $2.55.
Bob’s Red Mill:
In the past I’ve always gotten the best price by ordering directly from Bob’s Red Mill. The only catch is that the least expensive shipping option is USP ground and that is SLOW…at least when you’re accustomed to Amazon Prime 2-day shipping. Obviously, if you live closer to Oregon you’ll get a lower shipping cost and faster delivery than I did.
Brown Rice Flour: Costs $25.16, shipping costs range from $35.12 to $192.98 (I estimated shipping costs using our old Alabama address). Total cost for the slowest shipping option for the location that I chose is $60.28 or $2.41/lb.
Organic Brown Rice Flour: Costs $40.52. The shipping options were the same, so total cost for me would have been $75.64 or $3.03/lb.
Azure Standard:
I haven’t ordered from Azure Standard yet, since I haven’t figured out where I’d store bulk flour in the RV. However, I’ve had several people recommend the site to me as a great place to get gluten free flours at a low cost. They do offer a couple of different shipping options, so if you live on the Western side of the country you may be able to get much better pricing on shipping than I did.
Lundberg Rice Flour, Brown, Eco-Farmed: The cost is $23.80, and I’m assuming that shipping would be about the same as with Bob’s Red Mill since both companies are located in Oregon and Azure Standard uses UPS Ground too. That brings the total cost up to $58.92 or $2.36/lb.
Lundberg Rice Flour, Brown, Organic: The cost is $34.40 and as I mentioned, shipping costs will vary as Azure offers various shipping options. My total cost after shipping would be $69.52 or $2.78/lb.
PlanetRice Sprouted Rice Flour, Brown, Organic: This is a unique product. The flour is made from organic rice that has been sprouted. The cost, as you would expect, is higher than either regular or organic gluten free brown rice flour. At $64.10 for a 25 lb bag, plus the cost of UPS ground shipping, my total cost would be $99.22 or $3.97/lb.
5 Tips For Buying Gluten Free Flour in Bulk
- Always shop around – If I hadn’t been writing this article, I probably would have gone straight to Bob’s Red Mill and place an order. However, there are always new stores, new brands, and new sales. Taking the time to comparison shop can get you a great deal.
- Use a virtual assistant – Now, I know some of you are saying, “I don’t have time to comparison shop!” I know. I don’t either! My virtual assistant did all of the research for me and sent me an email with my options. Sending in the request took 1 minute and the cost of the task was $2.60. If I’d actually been buying flour, the deal that the assistant found on Lundburg flour would have saved me $37. That sort of leverage is what allows me to juggle a business, household, and homeschool. If you’re too busy to get through your to-do list, must less everything that you wish were on your to-do list, I highly recommend FancyHands. It’s a great virtual assistant service.
- Double-check your source – Just make sure that you’re familiar with the company that produced the flour and that they are doing their due diligence to make sure the flour starts out gluten free and stays gluten free.
- Make sure of your storage – It’s not a good day when you come home to a power outage after you’ve stocked your freezer full of great deals. If you can’t afford to replace what’s in your freezer, then you can’t afford to not have a generator.
- Look for free shipping – Shipping costs for 25 pound bags of flour gets prices. If you can find a free shipping option, then you’re probably going to end up with a phenomonal price. Free shipping on gluten free flours alone may make the cost of an Amazon Prime membership
worth it, without even considering all of the other benefits.
A great price on the flour! I would love to be able to do bulk shopping, but we live full time in a 36 foot 5th wheel RV and just don’t have the storage! I usually end up with about 5-10 lbs of flour at a time. Have to shop more often, but it works for us. We love the web site and trying all the recipes…favorite is “No Corn” for me bread. Going to try the bagel recipe soon.
Star, that’s exactly why I don’t buy bulk flour either. All of our storage is filled with toys, children’s books and bikes.
I’ve been baking gluten-dairy-soy free for a while now. I have found that many brown rice flours are gritty. I prefer Authentic Foods brand, but it is really expensive, especially with the shipping, so I’m always looking for a less expensive “grit-less” brown rice flour. If Authentic Foods brand is a “10,” how would these others rank? Sam’s brand in the bulk bins is at best a “2” because of the grit. King Arthur’s is probably an “8,” not too bad but not quite as good as Authentic Foods, which is stone ground and “superfine.” Please, can anyone shed some light on the grit factor of other brands?
Correction to my post. Sorry! Not Sam’s brand in bulk bins. I meant Whole Foods brand in the bulk bins! I think I need a refill on my coffee!
I’ve noticed that my local grocery stores carry Bob’s Red Mill flours. The packages are smaller (about 1 lb., or so), but these packages are an ideal size for me. I live on my own and I’m the only one in my family that has Celiac Disease. My favourite: Chocolate Chip cookie mix.
I have not had a lot of good experience with Bob’s Red Mill GF flour products. The brown rice flour was rancid, straight out of the bag, repeatedly! The cornbread mix didn’t taste like cornbread I’d ever eaten. Granted, I gave up after about four failures, but it’s way too expensive to have that many fails. I actually mill most of my flours now–brown rice and yellow millet. Don’t get brown millet–way too bitter!
The white rice flour and GF oats, as well as xanthan gum and GF baking powder are my successes with BRM products. But since they are so expensive I only buy them if I don’t have a better alternative, or am in a hurry, and don’t have time to order online. I believe Vitacost was a good resource for their products, price-wise, as well as Amazon.
We did look at Vitacost and Iherb.com for the research, but neither had 25 lb bags. I was going to include price data for large case purchases, but the article was already getting long.
I’ve never had a bad experience with BRM and try to buy it when I can, just to maintain consistency with my recipes. However, it also seems to be the most widely available flour in grocery stores, so that’s convenient for us.
Hi There
can you explain why these flours need to be stored in the freezer and not in the cupboard like other flours.
Thank you
Wendy
Wendy, many of these flours have natural oils in them that can go rancid at room temperature. Or at least that’s what I’ve always read and heard. I keep a batch of flour mix in a canister at room temp, and most everything else in the freezer.
But the flours you are talking about are cross contaminated with wheat, especially Bob’s Red Mill. I am too sensitive to have any gluten cross contamination. I find the best way is to use my Vita Mix dry blade and make the flour myself…quinoa, brown rice flour, etc….this way I don’t need extra storage space.
Loke » All of the flours that I linked to purport to be gluten free. Bob’s Red Mill tests their flour for gluten and they process it in a gluten free facility. There’s really not much more that can be done! I’m glad you’ve found a way to make you gluten free flour for yourself so that you don’t notice any reaction. However, I think it’s going a bit to far to say that all these flours are cross contaminated with gluten unless you have actual documentation to back that up.
I just bought bulk GF all-purpose flour from Better Batter. It is $8/20 oz. in the store. I got it for $3/lb online by buying 25lbs, plus free shipping! It is a great mix and works in every recipe I’ve tried so far.
Bethany – WHERE did you order that online????
Duh…I re-read your post! I see you bought it straight from better batter! Silly me! Haven’t had MY coffee yet this morning!!!
My DDIL just found out that she has a wheat allergy.
I was wondering if you could just take brown rice and pulverize it in a blender to make rice flour.
Thanks.
I think it would depend on the blender, but I’m definitely not an expert on grinding flours. This article looks like it might be helpful. http://www.attunefoods.com/blog/2013/04/how-to-make-your-own-gluten-free-flours-in-3-minutes-or-less/
I grind in my VitaMix using the dry container. There are tips and tricks to it – but it HAS to be a powerful blender! You want to start with frozen grain and immediately put it in a thin layer after grinding because of the heat factor destroying nutrients…
Did you find a place that sells Quinoa pasta in bulk. I found a couple of places on the web, but the shipping cost is double the product cost.
Thankfully, none of us in the family have a diagnosed Wheat allergy, but there are few medical conditions, where we would like to give a try to Quinoa pasta. We tried rice pasta and it was horrible, to cook and to eat.
I am pretty close to NYC, in case if the author or any visitor to this page knows a place where I can buy this. Thanks in advance.
I realize this blog post is very old, but I just found a new store that offers a great flour. The price is not the cheapest, but the flour works in every regular recipe I have. It makes baking easy again. http://shop.madewithlovenotgluten.com