Friday, February 1, 2013

Make Your Own Buckwheat Flour (Gluten-Free!)

When it comes to gluten-free baking, I'm in love with buckwheat flour.

I know it sounds scary because it has "wheat" in the name.  But according to Wikipedia:

Buckwheat is a plant cultivated for its grain-like seeds...Despite the name, buckwheat is not related to wheat, as it is not a cereal/grass; instead, buckwheat is related to sorrel, knotweed, and rhubarb."

Raw buckwheat groats are cheap and easy to find in our outdoor market.  They look like this:


To make buckwheat flour, I just put them in our blender and grind until fine (about 1/2 cup at a time).

Pros of buckwheat flour: 
  • You can substitute it for flour in any recipe.  
  • You don't have to spend time mixing a lot of different flours together.  
  • The finished products have a better texture than those made with rice flour.
  • It's much more nutritious than white rice flour.


Cons of buckwheat flour:
  • The finished products definitely have that healthy, made-with-whole-grain taste (which I actually like, but not everyone does.)

So far, we've used buckwheat flour successfully to make crackers, bread, muffins, gingerbread, pizza crust, quiche crust, and pancakes.



Here's a favorite breakfast recipe using buckwheat:

Buckwheat-Banana Muffins


Ingredients:
1 1/2 C buckwheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 mashed bananas
1/2 C sugar
1 egg
1/3 C butter

Directions:  Mix dry ingredients together.  Mix wet ingredients together.  Mix everything together and pour into muffin tin.  Bake at 175 degrees Celsius (350 Fahrenheit) 25-30 minutes.  Makes about 8 muffins.

6 comments:

  1. Great. Thanks. Need this and now I know how to make buckwheat flour.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Wow .. I wanted to make buckwheat flour & those muffins am sure gonna try ..

    ReplyDelete
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    ReplyDelete
  4. Quick question - I usually rinse the buckwheat groats really well. If I want to make flour I cannot so this. Is this OK? Thanks!

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  5. I grow buckwheat as a ground cover. Are the ground the same as seeds?

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  6. Oml I have been reading up on how to make buckwheat flour and there is way to much info and really confusing. Is it really this simple by just buying buckwheat groats and grinding them to make flour? Other websites have been talking about sprouting them, buying buckwheat seeds

    ReplyDelete