The precious legumes can also be transformed into tasty flours, perfect to change our food choices with imagination.
WHAT ARE AND WHAT TASTE HAVE
The flours of legumes are gluten-free and rich in proteins, vitamins, minerals and fibers, we know them better:
| FLOUR | TASTE |
| ADZUKI RED GREEN | sweet / sour with earthy notes of chestnut and / or walnuts |
| PEANUTS (they are not part of the family of nuts but rather of the legume family) | unmistakably sweet / savory with hints of nuts |
| CHICKPEAS | slightly sweet, with notes of earthy / dry fruit starches. If you find it bitter perhaps it has undergone an incorrect conservation. |
| BEANS (you can find white, red, black and borlotti beans) | slightly meaty sweet taste with hints of nuts |
| BEANS FAVA | sweet / bitter taste with buttery notes |
| LENTILS YELLOW RED
LENTILS GREEN BROWN BLACK |
slightly sweet
with notes of nuts, earthy and astringent |
| LUPINO | very pleasant bitter aftertaste |
| PEAS | sweets and starchy |
| SOY | neutral with hints of beans or slightly grassy |
WHY SOME DENATURE THE FLOURS OF LEGUMES?
The characteristic flavor of legumes may be too strong. The denaturation softens their aroma, improves their digestibility and makes them more workable in the doughs of “fresh pasta” and “leavened”.
This simple procedure can easily be done in our kitchen, here’s how:
| The flour is spread on a baking sheet in a very thin layer and baked at 90 °C for 3 hours.
It is important to respect the times and temperatures of denaturation. Shorter times would not bring any results. Higher temperatures would toast the flour making it suitable only for thickening or for the preparation of crepes, pancakes, béchamel, but no longer usable for doughs of “fresh pasta” or “leavened”. Once cooled, the “denatured” flours are stored in hermetically sealed glass jars, even for 6 months. |
THE LEGUMES ARE CARBOHYDRATES OR PROTEINS?
Legumes are mainly starchy, but have more protein than whole grains.They are composed more or less always from 60% of carbohydrates and from 18-20% of proteins. The exception is soy, which is composed of about 37% of proteins and peanuts with about 26% of proteins.
LEGUMES FLOURS IN THE KITCHEN
Also the legume flours can not replace wheat flour 1: 1, it is essential to know their density to understand how much they can replace wheat flour, find the table of flour in the page dedicated to the “Chart density flours”.
The union between cereals and legumes flour creates healthy and balanced dough but also used alone legumes flours are an excellent nutritional choice for:
-
- Thicken or as a substitute for eggs
- Sweet and savory biscuits
- Crackers
- Waffles, crepes, pancakes, waffles
- Baked sweets
- Unleavened Focaccia, such as the Faina or Farinata or chickpea flour, prepared in Liguria and Tuscany
- Focaccia, Bread and leavened Pizzas
- Omelette veg
- Pancakes leavened, like the Ligurian Cuculis
- Pancakes not leavened like Panelle a Sicilian street-food prepared with chickpeas or broad beans
- Fresh pasta
- Shortbread and shortcrust pastry
- Pastries for frying such as the Trinidad & Tobago specialty Pakoris
- Piadine
- Polente, like that of the Marches of roveja (or pea of the fields, a link that seemed to have been forgotten, spread at high altitude in the Sibillini Mountains is due to its ability to withstand low temperatures and in conditions of water scarcity. par excellence of the shepherds and peasants who lived at high altitude)
- Waffle like the Indian Papads
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