Table Of ContentFLAVOR FLOURS
A NEW WAY TO BAKE WITH
Teff, Buckwheat, Sorghum, Other Whole & Ancient Grains, Nuts &
Non-Wheat Flours
ALICE MEDRICH
WITH MAYA KLEIN
NEW YORK
To our children
Lucy Medrich
Nate Klein
Wade Klein
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER ONE: RICE FLOUR
CHAPTER TWO: OAT FLOUR
CHAPTER THREE: CORN FLOUR AND CORNMEAL
CHAPTER FOUR: BUCKWHEAT FLOUR
CHAPTER FIVE: CHESTNUT FLOUR
CHAPTER SIX: TEFF FLOUR
CHAPTER SEVEN: SORGHUM FLOUR
CHAPTER EIGHT: NUT AND COCONUT FLOUR
CHAPTER NINE: ELEMENTS
RESOURCES
APPENDIX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CONVERSION CHARTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INTRODUCTION
If you are an avid cook or baker, or someone who tinkers in the kitchen for fun, you
probably walk the aisles of the best supermarkets and haunt specialty food shops for
new and interesting ingredients to taste and experiment with. You’ve no doubt noticed
the rainbow of so-called alternative flours a few steps from the regular flour in the
baking aisle. Oat flour, brown rice flour, corn flour, buckwheat flour . . . Maybe
you’ve tried some of them. Or maybe you still walk by, but wonder what to do with
them. I stopped passing them by and started experimenting with a few of the most
flavorful of these gorgeous flours several years ago for my book Pure Dessert. My
strategy then was to replace a portion of the wheat flour in a recipe with a new flour to
create a more interesting and flavorful cake or cookie. In essence, I treated the new
flours like flavor ingredients that also happened to have some of the bulky and
absorbent characteristics of the flour (wheat) that we are most familiar with. The
results were variously delicate, interesting, elegant, and decadent—all things desserts
should be—but they also made me smile to know that whole grains could be added to
desserts because they tasted good rather than because they were healthy! “Two birds
with one stone,” I thought, and also, “I’m not done here.”
Pure Dessert was just the beginning. Flavorful flours in the baking aisle
continued to beckon, and there are even more of them now (thanks to the growing
number of gluten-free eaters who have brought attention to them). Now everyone can
find these flours in better supermarkets across the country, as well as online.
Meanwhile, people who love food are more interested and open to the idea of flours
that taste and feel different from the all-purpose wheat flour standard. After a terrific
response to the wheat-free cookies in my book Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy Melt-
in-Your-Mouth Cookies, I was excited about working more with “flavor flours,”
treating them as “hero” ingredients (not just substitutions), and challenged by the idea
of using them exclusively—that is, without any wheat flour for support.
Flavor Flours is a collection of recipes that feature flours made of rice, oats,
corn, sorghum, teff, buckwheat, coconut, and chestnuts and other nuts. I chose these
flours because each has a very distinct flavor—a voice, really—even white rice,
though it can also work as a neutral backdrop for other flours and other ingredients.
With the arguable exception of white rice flour, flours that are essentially pure starch
are not included, partly because they aren’t that delicious and don’t have much flavor,
and partly because I love bringing more whole grains into baking, especially into
decadent and indulgent desserts, where they are still unexpected. Conveniently for
those with wheat issues, I’ve chosen only flours that are gluten free.
Rice, oats, and corn (and to a limited extent, buckwheat) are familiar to us as a
side dish, a bowl of porridge or groats, or a hearty bread. But once these familiar
grains are transformed into flours, they can be used in baked goods that have entirely
different textures. In the 1970s chefs started serving vegetable purees, many of which
were hard to identify. Why? Aside from the fact that tons of butter or cream was added
to them, we no longer had a familiar texture for reference. We had to pay attention.
Suddenly, we tasted flavors that we’d never noticed before. Tasting familiar grains in
new forms likewise reveals unexpected flavors. Grains like brown rice and oats have
a known pedigree that connects them to health food, hearty bread, and granola, so I
was startled at the delicate textures and aromas I found in the simplest cakes made
from their flours. I never dreamed that a plain oat flour sponge cake would taste like
butterscotch, or that a brown rice sponge could have such a moist and delicate butter
flavor, or that buckwheat would have notes of honey and rose.
Teff and sorghum are consumed around the world, but rarely by Americans, so I
had no experience baking with them but plenty of excitement about exploring the
possibilities. Rather than use them as they are used indigenously, I treat them like new
ingredients in familiar rather than ethnic baking. Teff is earthy and sometimes tastes
very much like whole wheat but without the bitterness of whole wheat. Sorghum has
flavors reminiscent of oats and corn, yet is somehow different. Chestnuts are most
familiar as a wintertime treat, roasted and sold on street corners, or used in traditional
turkey stuffing. The flour produced from dried chestnuts is soft and sweet, a wonderful
and inspiring baking ingredient. Rice flour has its own distinct flavor and can be used
by itself, but it also works as a neutral backdrop for other ingredients.
Nuts and coconut are common in Western baking; every good baker’s notebook
includes a variety of European nut torten made with ground nuts or nut meal—now
often called nut flour. Used as the major ingredient in recipes without any other flour
or as a partner to other flavor flours, nut flours make sensational cakes, cookies, and
more. Coconut, once a polarizing ingredient (people either loved it or hated it), is now
very much in vogue. The easy availability of coconut flour and dried coconut—not just
the old supersweet shreds—makes coconut a more versatile and compelling ingredient
than ever. I have always loved coconut and now have a reason to include it as a major
ingredient rather than just a flavor accessory, and an excuse for so many coconut
cookies in one book!
Flavor Flours is organized by flour; each chapter includes recipes that call for
that flour alone, as well as recipes with a partner flour that supports it. In conventional
gluten-free recipes, specialty flours like those used here are mixed with other flours
and starches to create an all-purpose neutral blend that can be used as a substitute for
wheat flour in everyday baking. I’ve taken a different, more ingredient-driven
approach here, by letting each flour star in a variety of delicious and surprising
recipes—as though wheat never existed! Blends of several flours are rare and are
used expressly to build bold and complex flavor profiles (as is the case in three
sensational savory crackers), rather than to create a neutral background. Since the goal
of this book is to celebrate the flavor of the flours, each one is treated as a hero, or
important feature of the recipe; I do not use an all-purpose flour blend.
Most of the recipes are for beloved familiar desserts and other baked goods:
brownies and chocolate cakes, biscuits and quick breads, cookies and doughnuts. In
each recipe, the flour is used for its own flavor and sometimes also to enhance the
ensemble of flavors in the recipe. Flours with nutty flavors like teff and buckwheat
add complexity and complementary flavor to a nutty fruitcake. Brownies made with
rice flour taste more chocolaty than “regular” brownies because the rice flour seems
to amplify the flavor of the chocolate! The same is true of chocolate soufflés and many
other desserts. Brownies made with teff flour get an added nuance of cocoa flavor
from the teff. The deep, earthy flavor of buckwheat is such a natural in Panforte Nero
(see recipe), with its warm spices, black figs, and amber honey, it’s probably hard to
imagine that Buckwheat Sour Cream Soufflés (see recipe) drizzled with honey could
be so delicate and floral by contrast. A classic Swiss tart filled with honey and
walnuts gets bonus flavor from a chestnut flour crust, as does a ricotta cheesecake;
chestnut génoise is good enough to nibble with your coffee all by itself, and even
better with crème fraîche and spiced pear or apple butter.
Rice flour alone is spectacularly delicious in a chiffon cake—you will be
amazed—but in biscuits and some butter cakes, the flavor is more nuanced and
complex with a little oat flour blended in.
The “new” flours do require some new rules and techniques, but surprisingly
few. Most of the more fiddly, intricate techniques of classical baking—designed to
outfox gluten and prevent it from producing tough cakes and cookies—are no longer
necessary. Mixing is done in fewer steps with less fuss. Baking in a tube pan or a
sheet pan (or two or three shallow pans) rather than a regular deep cake pan gives
support to some of the most delicate cakes; a little xanthan gum and plenty of mixing
provides needed structure—and a velvety texture—for other types of cakes. In a sense,
the most surprising aspect of the “new” techniques may be the extent to which some of
the old techniques are no longer necessary.
Exploring with these fantastically flavorful ingredients has been the continuation
of a lifelong exploration of baking and joyful collaboration in the kitchen. You will
discover, as I have, that these flours and flavors belong in every passionate baker’s
repertoire. They are for everyone who loves new tastes and has a curious palate,
including gluten-free eaters. I hope these new recipes and fresh ideas add excitement
and variety to your table and elicit smiles of pleasure from your guests. I hope you
build on them and create new traditions as well. I wish you many more hours of happy
and rewarding baking.
THE PROCESS
I knew that a book like this one—about new ingredients and new ways of using them
—would require endless experimentation, leaps of imagination, creativity, and
sometimes the ability to hold two opposing ideas long enough to discover some
intricate reasoning that might make both of them true. There were so many new
questions—with every answer seemingly raising at least five more questions—that I
knew I needed a partner.
I enlisted Maya Klein to join the project. Portland, Oregon–based cooking
teacher, culinary consultant, and great friend, Maya has worked with me for decades
—starting with recipe testing when I revised several of the baking chapters for the
1997 New Joy of Cooking. Maya continued to work with me on my own books, testing
and creating recipes, contributing ideas, and talking through problems. I don’t know
anyone else with her palate and her ability to combine intuition and creativity with
analysis—or with whom hard questions are so much fun to ponder. Meanwhile, Maya
is herself wheat sensitive and has been re-inventing her own baking for several years.
She immediately “got” the idea of baking with flavorful flours in a new way rather
than treating them as wheat flour substitutes, and her immediate reaction turned into a
mantra: What would baking be like if wheat didn’t exist?
Our ongoing dialogue was invaluable, as always, but this time it proved
essential: the process of baking with mostly unfamiliar flours was filled with
unexpected challenges and surprising outcomes. Sometimes, for example, we were
both working with the same flour but in different types of recipes and getting wildly
different flavors and textures—it seemed as though we were each seeing a different
part of the same elephant. But this forced us to figure out why we were getting
different results and how we could use the lesson to our advantage. The story about
buckwheat testing and the lessons we learned about using it (click here) just begin to
capture the benefits of a great collaboration. What we learned and produced together
was far greater than the sum of our individual talents and experience. If you want to
understand our testing process or are wondering how the recipes in Flavor Flours
differ from traditional wheat-based baking, read on; our thinking and experimenting
are described and summarized in the next few sections as well as in the recipes.
What If Wheat Didn’t Exist?
Western bakers are so accustomed to wheat flour that its behavioral quirks are simply
taken for granted. We hardly notice that traditional baking techniques are built around
