Favorite Gluten free flour brand for baking?

I prefer Cup4Cup BECAUSE it's flavorless. I've used blends with things like garbanzo bean flour and fava bean flour and the flavor was far too powerful to ignore. When I'm making a carrot ginger cake, I want to taste the carrots, ginger, spices, etc....not a bean flavor. If I was making a biscuit or a pastry that mirrored those earthy aspects, I'd welcome it...but for every day, all-purpose, seamless cake baking...and I'm not interested in blending my own...I stand by Cup4Cup. Especially if you're not going to be baking for your own GF needs. If you lived in a newly gluten free environment, I'd say play with blends and find a few different ones that suit different recipes, but for something that you won't have to fight with and will provide you with the structure that you need, I think buying a basic blend is a good idea.

Part of choosing a GF flour, though, is learning how to use GF flours in general. They often absorb liquid more readily and absorb fat a little less efficiently than wheat flour. So that's also something to keep in mind.

I say make a very basic cake in small batches and test a few blends. After all, it ultimately comes down to personal taste...whether you like the flavors and textures. It might be something fun for you and your friend (and anyone else interested in doing a Cook's Illustrated-style blind taste test) to do on a weekend. Make a few small, 1 layer vanilla cakes (something that won't hide the flavor of the blend), and make a pot of tea. It's a bit extensive, but it could be fun.

I had great success baking a chocolate cake with Bella. Found it at my normal grocery store and nobody could even tell it was a g-f cake!

It really depends on what you plan to bake. If it's sweet things, I suggest making your own.* If it's savoury things, Bob's Red Mill. Cup4Cup is mostly tapioca starch, which not only has no nutritional value, but it tastes of less than nothing. *When I do wheat and GF free baking at home I use mostly sorghum, chestnut, oat, and coconut. I make my own mixture. Check out the blog Gluten Free Girl - she has a number of different ratios. Again, it really depends on what you're making. GF flours are nothing at all like wheat, so there's no silver bullet one size fits all. If you must buy pre-made flour mix, look at the ingredients on the package.

Definitely Cup4Cup....even 5 years ago when I first used it, and gluten free baking was still in relative infancy it was the only blend that was nearly seamless in transition and virtually flavorless.

Bob's Red Mill