Gluten-Free? Try Baking With This Italian Favorite, Chestnut Flour
Sheela Prakash
Baking gluten-free is becoming easier and easier these days thanks to the greater availability of gluten-free flours. Rice flour, buckwheat flour, and quinoa flour are just a few examples of what you’ll find on grocery store shelves these days, and some of the most popular of the bunch. But there are many types of flour that are naturally gluten-free.
The best part about these gluten-free varieties is that they bring completely new textures and flavors to even your most standard baked good. So even if you don’t follow a gluten-free diet, it’s fun to experiment with them and incorporate them into your baking repertoire.
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That’s why you should start baking with chestnut flour. I first discovered it last year while living in Italy. As someone who’s a sucker for roasted chestnuts and who will instantly order anything on a restaurant menu with “chestnut” in the description, I was intrigued by the bags I found at my local grocery store. So I picked one up and started researching what I could do with it… and as it turns out, there’s quite a lot.
Made by processing dry, roasted chestnuts into a fine flour, it can be used to replace part of the all-purpose flour called for in a standard recipe or all of the rice flour in a gluten-free recipe. It lends a nutty, earthy note to anything to which it’s added.
In certain regions of Italy, chestnut flour is most traditionally used to make Castagnaccio, a rich, barely sweet cake. Since it’s made entirely of chestnut flour, the cake is gluten-free. It also has no leavening agent, so it’s quite dense, studded with nothing more than raisins, pine nuts, and rosemary. A similar but slightly sweeter and lighter cake (thanks to honey and leavening) is this Chestnut and Hazelnut Cake. One of the first recipes I attempted with my initial bag of flour, it gets an extra boost of nutty flavor from finely chopped hazelnuts.
Chestnut flour is also used to make crepes. In Italy they are called necci, and are traditionally eaten plain or slathered with ricotta and honey. Since chestnut flour isn’t very sweet, crepes like these also are perfect for savory fillings. Chestnut Crêpes with Creamy Mushrooms are not only gluten-free but they are also a unique winter meal that show off the flour’s flavor.
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I also love using chestnut flour in pie and tart dough. Swapping out a 1/2 cup of all-purpose flour in this Butternut Squash Galette for chestnut flour yields a nutty crust that pairs well with the winter squash and goat cheese filling.
More from Epicurious:
Winter Breakfast of Champions: Creating the Ultimate Egg Sandwich
A Visual Guide to Winter Squash
The Health Eating Plan: A Week’s Worth of Recipes to Get Your Year Started Right
photo: Christina Holmes