Chickpea Flour???

[babeak]

Hi all,

I am am wondering if anyone has some chickpea flour recipes. It occured to me that if you can make quinoa sprout powder, you could do the same thing from chickpeas. In a pinch, you could skip the sprouting step altogether.

I just got the dry container for the Vitamix as well as a small wet. I love them both. I didn't initially because was advised it was not necessary, but then they had a sale. I will take the small one with me when I fly next. The dry one is great for blending oat groats, chia, flax, etc. and presumably for making chickpea flour.

THanks for any leads.

[Tirza]

Also called Besan Flour in Indian cuisine - possibly with the addition of fava (or broad-bean) flour.

I did a bunch of research on this once, even trying to find out how to make it myself. One method was to drain and dry canned chickpeas and grind them. So that wouldn't work as it's cooked. As far as I recall, this is pretty much used in cooked applications. It thickens things and replaces eggs - makes a great eggless crepe! I'm thinking to try this again in the D and see if the warmth in there will firm them up and yield close to the same result. The only thing is, I am pretty sure that the chickpea or besan flour that is available in HF stores must be from cooked beans. Anyone know this?

If anyone has info/recipes for uncooked, I'd love to see them too.

[CrazyDelicious]

Could you sprout the chickpeas, dry in the dehydrator, then grind into flour? You would get more nutrients that way than just grinding the dried chickpeas. It is probable that commercial chickpea flour is made from chickpeas that were dried at a high heat, but I don't really know. I would definitely sprout them first!

xx

[babeak]

I looked up how to make chickpea flour and about.com said just take dried chickpeas and grind them up. It did not say that they had to be cooked. I have these great non-raw crackers that are made in Boulder, Myrna's Skinny Krisps. They are made with chickpea flour and nuts, but then baked. I was thinking maybe I could sprout some, dry, grind and then make some kind of cracker or crepe with them, but I wanted to see if anyone else had tried this before I put the time into it.

[CrazyDelicious]

I have made tons of different kinds of crackers, but none with chickpeas - sorry! I usually use flax, nuts, juicing pulp, or buckwheat. I don't like sprouted beans at all. You might find that sprouted chickpea flour tastes very different from the regular stuff. I find with raw that sometimes the best substitutes are quite different - for example I love raw hummus made with zucchini or soaked cashews, but really don't like the taste when it's made with sprouted chickpeas as they are so different in flavour from the cooked kind.

But really the only way to see if you will like it is to try it out! I'm sure it will work - just a matter of whether you will like the taste. You could also try sprouting/drying buckwheat (much faster) and grinding that into flour. And the fastest cracker ever = flax. Just spice it up as you want! :)

[babeak]

Crazydelicious. Yes, I use sprouted buckwheat, sprouted sunflower, flax, chia, etc. I was just trying to get a different complement of nutrients, vitamins, etc.

In addiiton, these non-raw crackers are delicious, but not full of too much junk....the would almost be acceptable if they were not cooked. Although I must say, I would have to get rid of the almonds for DD.

I guess if there is no one who has experience, then I will have to try it.

[kaybee]

resurrecting this thread.... anyone find out if chickpea flour from hfs is raw, or try sprouting and drying and grinding themselves? there is a fabulous (cooked) chickpea pancake made in the oven with chickpea flour that ive been wanting to see if i could sort of replicate raw... so i tried sprouting and dehydrating chickpeas but they were so hard when dehydrated that i thought they would bust my fp or coffee grinder if i tried to grind them into flour. i guess i could try blending the raw sprouted undehydrated chickpeas and try to use that, but its not going to end up like a fine powder, which is whats really needed... using the fine ground flour from the store, while not sprouted so not ideal, but would be so much easier if the powder is raw

similarly, anyone know if chestnut flour is raw?

[Tirza]

I'm thinking of soaking then grinding them pretty fine, then dehydrating until very dry like you would for almond flour with the pulp left from almond milk. If you had to grind it finer after it's dehydrated, you could do it with no risk to equipment and the dehydrating might just tone down that raw bean-y taste.

[kaybee]

hm yeah i guess maybe sprouting, fp, dehydrating, finer grinding might work without killing the equipment