How to use up ten pounds of brown rice flour
They cleaned out a freezer at my Zen center today, and sent me home with some unwanted flour.
Someone, at some point, was fond of brown rice flour. I am wondering how best to use it up. I searched for rice flour discussions here and they all seemed to involve rice flour to dust bannetons, or rice flour as a substitute for wheat flour in gluten-free bread.
I do not have any bannetons, not that dusting them would use up ten approximately ten pounds of flour. I am not interested in baking gluten-free bread. I buy white bread flour, higher gluten than AP, for my sourdough bread.
Probably I should just substitute brown rice flour for some percentage of the wheat flour in a recipe. Perhaps substitute for whole wheat in struan bread. What would be a percentage that would still give me a good rise, crumb, and crust?
P.S, Got small bags of other odd flours. Garbanzo-fava flour? Tapioca flour? Millet flour? Suggestions?
in any standard white bread recipe works great.
Millet flour gets rancid. Be careful.
Tapioca flour is a bit like cornstarch.
Happy Baking,Juergen
The millet flour was frozen. However, I will taste it before using it. I hope that any rancidity will be immediately evident.
When I experimented with GF flours I got millet lour from a local organic shop - without experience I thought it was the particular smell of millet flour. Well, I learned the hard way.
If your first impression is "I don't really want to use this" then it's probably off.
Millet flour in particular seems to go off very quickly.
If all those various flours were at the zen center, it would seem to me that they were all used together to make GF bread. I think there are lots of ways you could use it all up. One is to substitute just a little in your standard bread recipes as this conversation has already been going that way. If it were me, I'd use the opportunity to experiment a little. Buy some VWG to boost the gluten content, and use a greater portion of one or more of those flours in your standard recipe. You can use a little math to figure out how much VWG to use so that the total gluten amount of your dough stays approximately the same as before. You may find a combination that you like that way. Another use for the flour could be as a feed for your starter. Sourdough starter only needs the starch from flour, not gluten. So you can save your regular flour for baking and use the "free" flour for feeding the beasties! You may find a combination that they like, that makes them more active and strong!
edit: Do you like sake? I think it's made from fermented rice...
Never liked sake all that much, and don't drink at all now. Booze has nutrition-less calories and I'm trying to lose weight. (Lost and kept off 60 pounds so far, over several years). I should probably give up bread too, but it is my one major treat on a food stamp diet.
Chickpea flour can be used up with some Indian cookery; pakora and pakore wali kadhai come to mind first (the latter is especially good on a cold rainy day), and also besan pudla (which I usually make a little thicker and with tomato and onion). Mediterranean socca come to mind as well, and maybe panisses.
Tapioca flour can be used as a thickener in soups, stews and sauces, or substituted for a portion of the flour in cakes, brownies and other pastries for a more delicate texture. I would say about 10% - 20%, depending on how strong the flour you're already using is.
Millet flour could probably be used in a lot of the same places that I've suggested using chickpea flour, as well. I tried an experimental shortbread with 50% millet and 50% AP a while ago, which was okay.
Brown rice flour would probably also work well for battering and frying veggies and making savory (or sweet) pancake-type things. I'm afraid I don't have much to suggest for the thing you have the most of. Maybe try using a large proportion of it in a muffin recipe?
Oh, of course! I actually have a bag of Indian chickpea flour, besan, and was planning to use it in kofta and such.
1) I use tapioca flour instead of cornstarch all the time, works great.
2) I'm on a pasta-making binge right now, and I'd try the brown rice or millet flour mixed in with semolina for pasta.
3) I'd also try any of the flours in my favorite cracker recipe: http://www.goodfoodworld.com/2013/11/sourdough-crackers-easy-and-versatile/ Used buckwheat flour in this week's batch (with butter) - but I had to add a little more whole wheat flour to give it enough body to roll out. Yummy!
Enjoy your new-found riches!
Additionally, I don't know how much you like chickpeas/chickpea flour, but I tend to prefer it toasted, or at least cooked thoroughly - raw besan is much less delicious to me, so if you're like me, you may want to toast it a bit.
Chickpea stew with sofrito, chicken broth, salt, pepper, chili paste, balsamic vinegar, and parmesan cheese. Surprisingly good.
Plain cooked chickpeas air-dryed, then rolled in a tablespoon of olive oil and some fresh-ground pepper, Hawaiian salt, and a glob of harissa. One hour at 350 F in one layer on a baking pan, shake occasionally. Crisp, hot, tasty. I eat too many and I get the musical fruit effect.
I love chickpeas too - I've done roasted ones before, but not with harissa (yet). I made a cucumber and chickpea salad the other day for dinner, which was nice, and have some in my fridge that I'm eyeing for hummus.
Jacqueline Pham has a recipe that uses water, yeast,barley malt syrup, malt powder, honey baking powder, rice flour and salt and all purpose flour. . She lets the dough sit overnight room temperature
the recipe comes from her Banh Mi cookbook..