I just bought the dry grains container for the Vitamix so I could grind my own grains into flour. Well I started poking around on the internet and discovered something called bean flour and thought it was such a clever idea that I could now implement! At the time I didn’t even really research its uses, I just thought it was cool and went out and bought about 10 different kinds of dried beans to try (they are very inexpensive, about a dollar or two per bag). I just popped them a couple cups at a time into the dry grains container, followed the instructions in the vitamix grains book and voila! Flour. It was so neat! First its just a little bean and after a few seconds in the Vitamix, poof! It’s flour. Soft fluffy bread flour. It totally blew my mind. I made lentil flour, split pea flour, chick pea flour, kidney bean flour and many more.

I stored a lot of it in my freezer, but I had all this bean flour, so I had to research some yummy things to make with it. I decided to try crackers because those seemed easy enough to make and I knew they would be eaten by myself and little fella for sure. I didn’t want to start with a yeast bread because you can really mess those up and then you have to throw away the bread, you’ve wasted the flour and are now discouraged from using bean flour. Very sad.

Chick Pea flour! Cool!

Again, I opened up my computer and googled “bean flour crackers” and got a lot of recipes for “chick pea crackers.” Lucky for me, I had some chick pea flour hanging out in my freezer. I decided to try this recipe from a clever and informative blog called “Nourishing Flourishing.” They were so flavorful, crunchy and delicious. And I didn’t feel the least bit guilty after eating them. Here is the recipe:

3 Tb ground flax seed
1/2 C + 2 Tb water
1 C chickpea (garbanzo bean) flour
1/2 t salt
1/2 T extra virgin olive oil
1 Tb rosemary
1 t basil

I did not have any rosemary, but I followed the rest of the recipe to a tee.

1) Preheat oven at 350*. Make flax egg by mixing water and flax. Set aside to thicken for a few minutes.
2) Mix dry ingredients.
3) Add wet ingredients to dry and stir to combine. (If you need to add another TB or two water, go ahead.)
4) Wet hands with water, and remove dough from bowl.
5) Place dough on a parchment paper-laden baking sheet, and begin to flatten with hands (you may need to keep re-wetting them with water). The thinner, the crisper.
6) Once you’ve shaped the dough, you can sprinkle a little extra salt on the top
7) Bake for approximately 15-20 minutes (when the edges are golden brown).

And here are her photos. I suppose I should have just linked this to her site, but if you are interested, click anyway. She has some really great stuff!

Another super cool thing you can do with chick pea flour is make hummus! No need to puree the beans, since you already did that. All you have to do is simmer some salted water and add chick pea flour until it makes a paste (it’s about 3 parts water to 1 part chick pea flour). Then you just add your tahini, lemon juice, garlic, roasted red peppers etc. to make hummus however you like it. It is really creamy and thick if you make it this way, with no big chunks of chick peas. Here is a photo I found from food network. I took a picture, but it looked terrible. So I decided to use this one :). I am still learning…