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Coconut Flour


dockhl

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I am eager to try coconut flour as an alternative to wheat but only seem to find sweet recipes out there. I am looking at it as both a gluten free and low carb choice.

Does anyone have any experience working with it? I love the taste of coconut oil in savory applications (scrambled eggs !) so I am open. :wink:

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Funny you should bring that up, I'll have to keep watch on this one as well. Coconut flour just showed up in the local grocery recently and I'm all fired up to play with it. I've never used it before for sweet or savory so I can't just leave it sitting in the store. I'm on a need-to-know basis when I find ingredients I haven't worked with.

It's kinda like wrestling a gorilla... you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is tired.

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I've got some in the house. I was up at an organic coconut product importer in Hagersville a year or so ago, saw it, and decided I had to get some to play with. Every time I walk past it in it's vacuum sealed container I think I should start experimenting with it again.

I've used it once in a chocolate center I was experimenting with - I needed it to be less moist. Not a great success. No longer moist at all.

Funny thing, after I saw tri2cook talking about it last night - I had decided that I was going to add 1/2 cup of it to the crostadas I was baking today using the recipe from David Lebovitz's blog in place of the cornmeal. But I forgot.

It does have a distinctly coconut flavour so that would have to be factored in for savory applications.

I'm afraid my experience with gluten free baking is limited so I'm not sure which gluten free flours with which it would best combine. Does the "Gluten Free Gourmet Bakes Bread" mention it at all?

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Hmmm. Mostly positive reviews. Wow, LOTS of eggs , tho !

I've been searching like crazy but not coming up with much useful for savory, and everyone seems to indicate that working with it is very hit or miss--you cannot just substitute it for anything else. It seems to retain a lot of moisture. Might be good to mix with almond flour.

I know you can use it w/ almond flour for breading on chicken, etc.

I have some on order. We'll see.

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It can easily be used for savory biscuits and quickbreads, in pancakes or fritters- like zucchini or corncakes, as a coating with ground coriander or paprika or grated cheese and so on, bechamel sauce, in dumpling and pasta dough with the inclusion of extra binders like egg or xantham gum, as a thickener for soups and stews, and in nutloafs/meatloaf/balls. Just be aware- it is highly absorbent, so not the best for deep frying, and hence a need for combining it with other flours.

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