Post Punk Kitchen Forum

hello everyone. can't find chickpea flour in bulk or in a bag at my natural foods store. this may be a very silly question, but i can i just buy dry chickpeas and whiz them in my food processor to turn them into powder, aka flour??? i'm not 100% sure my natural food store sells dried chickpeas but i have seen a couple of different types of soybeans/soynuts so that gives me hope ;)

Is there a section of your store with a bunch of Bob's Red Mill flours? They make a chickpea flour that I see in a lot of places.

Yes, you can definitely do that. You want the pieces very fine though! It's a good idea to run the grinds through a sieve or sifter after to get out any large chunks. Where are you from? If you're in the U.S., you can probably find dried chickpeas in bags in the "regular" supermarket as well. For example, the Goya brand sells them. Alternatively, you could buy chickpea flour online.

If you have an Indian grocery anywhere nearby, you should be able to find it there too. It can also be called gram flour or besan, so check for those on the label too.

yup they have tons of bob's red mill stuff at Earth Fare, but no chickpea flour :( i'll look harder next time. And while I usually shop at Publix, I'll try to pop into Kroger as they have a really big natural foods section with bob's red mill and I can look there.



thanks for the tip about goya! I am in the USA. hhhmmmm..... not sure if my food processor can handle the job......



hhhmm...... there might be one in my town.... if not, maybe i'll have to make up an excuse for a road trip here......
http://www.dekalbfarmersmarket.com/

I bet you could ask them to order it at your local health food store. It's generally really cheap and if they already have bob's red mill, it probably wouldn't be too hard for them to get it.
Also, you probably know this, but it might be called garbanzo bean flour. Sometimes there's also a garbanzo fava mix called garfava.

I don't suggest making it yourself. I've done it and destroyed a food processor and a coffee grinder. I would ask them to order it for you...much cheaper than a new food processor.

Another suggestion is to look around in the grocery store, because my store sells flours and beans in like 5 different places. I don't know the reasoning, but I walk all the rows in search of items I see in cookbooks.

This place sell it online in packs of three if you like- plus other useful groceries, they have vegan cleaning supplies, personal care stuff, supplements and vitamins. If you click on a category on the right it will show vegan products only. I just got a bunch of stuff including a really big jug of agave syrup for $10.00 (a deal compared to my local prices) Check out their reward program with a friend it pays back on the next order.

http://www.vitacost.com/productResults.aspx?ntk=products&ss=1&Ntt=chickpea%20flour

+ a million. Food processors are definitely not made to make flour, and DEFINITELY not made to make chickpea flour. Those little dried forkers are like tiny rocks. Do not do this. Better to order online or get your HFS to start carrying it.

ps. Chickpea flour is awesome. You can make omelettes, indian pancakes (protein and pancake in one? why yes, it's possible), frittata and many other delicious things. You might as well stock up when you get a chance!

Try looking for it under other names such as garbanzo flour, gram flour or besan. Certainly in England you can normally find it with the baking stuff, gluten-free stuff or the world foods in most middle-to-large supermarkets. I lucked out and found some for 44p a kilo reduced recently and had to be careful not to buy a thousand tons of it.

thank you both for the advice! will definitely listen!

and thanks to everyone else for your continued comments. i will search carefully and hope to find some within the next week!

Don't raw chickpeas contain a certain level of toxins that can only be removed by boiling them at a certain temperature? I'm sure it would take a large amount to make you sick, but still ...

Also what bekki and smoothie said about it destroying a food processor +1 -- why not just order it online?

For what it's worth, I was totally able to grind up chickpeas using a Ninja blender without destroying it. It's loud as hell though, and you end up with a lot of large chunks that either need to be sifted out or re-grinded. If you live in the US I would agree with the others and say just order it off the internet if you can't find it locally, because where I order it from it's cheap ($2.75 for 22 oz). Personally I buy it rather than grind it, because cost-wise it's not much more expensive to just buy it, and who wants the hassle?

I think the advice to look around every nook and cranny of your local stores first is sound though, because sometimes they hide "exotic" ingredients in weird places. :)

a quick google search says raw chickpeas have "oxalic acid" I didn't read too much into it, not too concerned. quinoa has something similar because the raw quinoa has to be rinsed off being using it so you can rinse off whatever mild/moderate toxic substance is on it.

and yes, as i said above, i do not plan to use my food processor anymore. i'm going to see if i can find chickpea flour locally before i buy it online.

$2.99 at Nuts.Com. http://nuts.com/cookingbaking/beans/garbanzo/flour.html

FOUND at Earth Fare! Embarrassing because I went back to the same spot and looked again and there it was, so most likely I was not looking hard enough ;)

I paid $4.99 for my 22 oz. bag of bob's red mill stone ground garbanzo bean flour, which yes is pricey compared to online prices, but in Earth Fare's defense most of their items are reasonably priced and their produce and bulk bin sections are SO awesome. But I felt the $4.99 price was a good value for me because I didn't have to buy online and add other random things to my cart to justify s/h so I think things worked out just fine ;)

Yay, off to find recipes that use chickpea flour now! My library was able to borrow VWAV for me so I'm totally making some 'fronch toast' as I think that recipe calls for chickpea flour ;)