All about flour and how to make it

I consider basic information about flour to be very important. Most questions are raised by the sheer realization that regular flour is not off-limits. “What am I going to put my jam on? Or what do I eat with cheese?” or “I cannot live without bread, now what?”

Elaine Gottschall thought of this of course, and she had prepared a recipe for almond bread which you can find in her book “Breaking the vicious cycle” or on our site: Almond Bread.

Like I said previously, after some time I started making up my own recipes. Almond bread simply wasn’t enough for us. On our site or here in our cookbooks you will find many satisfactory answers to the question: “What can I eat besides bread?” 🙂

So, let’s talk nut flour. First I need to decide whether I am making a sweet or savory pastry, then it’s just a matter of selecting appropriate nuts and grind them. I grind my own flour from whole nuts using a hand blender Bosch MSM 88190. Most commonly used nuts in our kitchen would be almond, cashew, pecan, hazelnuts or walnuts. You can also buy a ready made nut flour from health food stores or online. We don’t really recommend going this way though. There are two big reasons for this. Firstly, it’s about the quality of nuts. It’s hard to tell from the flour what did the nuts look like before the grind, and using quality ingredients is essential for SCD healing. Secondly, the price of such flour. It tends to be overblown. Our advice is, find a wholesale store that can supply you with quality dried nuts, the prices tend to be much more acceptable and quality should be guaranteed. If only because, they don’t spend a lot of time in the warehouse. There is always high demand for them. In time, I discovered something to make working with nuts easier. In most recipes I use whole nuts and I blend them using a high performance blender right in the mixture. So I save time and I don’t have to constantly clean up the appliance. 🙂

And the fact that you don’t have to use nut flour, but also flour of a different kind is something you can learn about in the following segment.

Flours suitable for healing on SCD

Among my favorites is certainly banana flour, made from ripe bananas. It’s very easy to work with and it can easily substitute regular flour. That’s why it became my most used flour, be it sweet or savory baking. You can find more in my cookbook that’s all about banana flour.

Another suitable flour that could overtake the number 1 spot is coconut flour. I started using it only much later and I was pleasantly surprised. While it doesn’t have such strong binding properties compared to banana flour, it soaks up liquids, so you don’t have to use very much of it. Which is comparable to the banana flour.

Legume flour would be another option how to improve variety. You can use pea, lentil or bean flour, as long as it’s suitable for SCD. These can also be bought from stores, but we once again cannot truly recommend these. Producers do not soak the legumes before grinding and for SCD, soaking is integral. All legumes must be soaked for 12 hours before consumption. If you want to use such flour, then it’s best if you make it yourself. Meaning, your legumes of choice are soaked for 12 hours, then let them dry properly and once that’s all done, grind them. Only then can you be really sure.

I get questions about fruit flour. Most often apple flour. There is no need to soak apples, but again, you really don’t know much about the quality of the fruit from which the flour is made. I don’t really want to go into a whole tirade about how industry ketchup or tomato puree is made… While I don’t want to say it’s the same for apple flour, our rule “We don’t eat or drink that, which we do not know how it came to be” is in effect. So, we do not recommend buying this flour from a store. Instead, make your own.