On paper, how do different flours compare?

For the number crunchers, the table shows the macronutrient profile of non-wheat flours as pitted against traditional white and wholemeal wheat flour (not specialty bread making or pastry flours). These numbers are average approximate values. Tell me if I have missed your favourite flour and I will add it.

You can not choose a flour based on the key macronutrient levels and energy content alone. You need to dig deeper so this table is for curiosity.

Macronutrient profile of flours:

non-grain flours

Here’s a closer look at the non-grain flours that nudged their way to the top of my list based on complete nutrition profiles:

• Nut flour (also known as nut meal) is finely ground nuts. Almond meal is very popular in cake baking as it adds a denser moist texture and hint of nuttiness to baked goods. Nut flours have a similar fibre content yet more fat, protein and kilojoules than wholemeal wheat flour. Almond meal is very low in total carbohydrate with less than one tenth of the carbohydrate of wheat flour. Almond meal is an excellent source of Vitamin E and the elements selenium and magnesium. Nut flours are naturally gluten-free. Almond meal is a worthwhile pantry staple. Hazelnut meal, although it looks nutritionally good on paper, has a strong distinct somewhat bitter flavour that makes it less versatile than almond meal. Nuts are declared allergens on food labels.
• Red lentil flour contains double the protein yet a similar fibre, energy and fat content to wholemeal wheat flour. Red lentil flour contains less carbohydrate than wheat flour. Nutrients of note in red lentils: more than double the iron, magnesium and potassium of white wheat flour. Lentils are naturally gluten-free. Packaged red lentil flour is convenient but you can make your own by pulsing dry red lentils until they become a powdery flour in a strong blender mill. One advantage of homemade lentil flour is that you only need to keep whole red lentils in the pantry to make into flour or cook whole in soups, casseroles, stews and for salads.

Red lentil flour is easy to work with and adds a slight pinky-apricot blush colour to scones but more about the scone experiment later.

• Coconut flour’s good features are that it contains more fibre and protein than wholemeal wheat flour. On the flip side is its high saturated fat content. This is not great for blood vessels if your current eating plan still needs improvement. There are much healthier flours than coconut flour to choos from. Coconut flour’s specific nutrient composition varies wildly from brand to brand. Coconut flour is a by-product from the extraction of coconut milk (cream) from coconut flesh. I assume that the wild and wide variations in nutrient profile of coconut flour reflect how thorough the extraction process is at a factory. The variation in protein, fat and carbohydrate levels would make it hard to replicate a recipe using a different branded flour. Coconuts are naturally gluten-free. Coconut flour is not powdered desiccated coconut.

• Soya flour has the highest protein content (at least 42%) and one of the lowest carbohydrate contents of all flours I explored but soy flour is not pleasant as a standalone flour in baking. It has a strong flavour. The commercial baking industry uses soy flour in small amounts as an improving agent. Soya flour is a by-product from oil extraction and comes in defatted and full fat varieties. The bottom line is do not replace wheat flour with soya flour in recipes. To replace all wheat flour with soya flour will not work and it won’t taste good either. Soya flour is a declared allergen on food labels.

• Chickpea flour is also called besan and gram flour. Chickpea flour is a nutritional gem with about twice the protein of wholemeal flour, 50% more fibre and 30% less carbohydrate. It has more vitamin E and around twice the iron, magnesium and potassium of white wheat flour. Chickpea flour brings its own flavour and distinct aroma to cooking. Some people find it metallic or bitter and say it is only suited for savoury recipes but I use it in both sweet and savoury recipes, influenced by Indian cuisines. Chickpeas are naturally gluten-free. I buy chickpea besan flour for convenience and because I don’t have a strong blender mill. Chickpea scones tasted fine with sultanas in my basic adapted scone recipe. Find out more about the scone tests later. Straight out of the oven, the smell of chickpeas in baked goods is strong but this subsides as the scone cools.

• Lupin is a legume with some very positive nutritional features. Lupin flour has almost four times the protein and four times the fibre of wheat flour, and a very low carbohydrate content (one tenth that of wheat flour). On paper it is another nutritional gem. Lupin is naturally gluten-free but is listed as a declared allergen on food labels. My trusty blender milled down lupin flakes into flour sifted for the scone experiment because I couldn’t quickly get lupin flour locally. When you add lupin flakes to traditional dough recipes, the baked product will have yellow flecks scattered throughout. Once ground to a flour it adds a subtle yellow colour.

baking scones with non-grain flours is not simple

With my shortlist of flours in hand, I set about to see if I could bake a better (healthier) scone without too much fuss or other specialist ingredients such as xanthan gum or gluten.

I knew I was up for the challenge but little did I know that the vast internet web would be so awash with dud scone recipes with dodgy ingredient substitutions that are clearly untested with tricked-up misleading imagery of the final baked scone. After hours scouring the internet looking for credible recipe leads and instructions, I turned to food technology journals for some guidance.

There is nothing simple about replacing wheat flour with non-grain flours made from lentils, chickpeas, lupin, almonds and coconut. If you have found a guaranteed method that suits all recipes, please let me know.

Not many recipes will work when you replace all of the wheat flour with a non-wheat flour, that is, a 100% substitution.

Different flours have different properties that alter how a recipe works. Even wheat flour comes in several varieties (of protein levels) to suit specific recipes: pastry flour, bread flour, pasta flour and cake flour.

• Cup-for-cup substitution is rare. Weight for cup and spoon measurements may be different to wheat flour. See the table of household measures and weights that follows. For example, 1 cup white flour weighs 150 g yet 1 cup coconut flour weighs only 90 g. But that doesn’t mean you ought to do a weight-for-weight substitution either. For coconut flour, manufacturers recommend you replace 100 g wheat flour with a tiny 20 g coconut flour.

• Non-wheat flours are either gluten-free or lower in gluten than wheat flour. The lack of gluten means they often do not perform well in yeasted doughs and cake batters that rely on gluten to give the dough and batter structure and assist with raising. Even with the addition of a raising assistant such as pure gluten, baking powder, baking soda or whipped egg whites, the rise on breads and cakes might be less than expected …. a flop to put it honestly. Non-wheat flours work better in crackers, biscuits and flat breads because gluten is not so critical.

• Wheat flour has quite a neutral flavour and smell compared with legume and bean flours, which have distinct flavours and aromas that some people find unpleasant. When you cook with non-wheat flours, you may also get a different coloured product.

• Some non-wheat flours absorb a lot more moisture than wheat flour. The recipe mix may need to rest to allow the extra moisture to be taken up by the flour. Even with resting, the dough may be so sticky you can not roll it out or knead it. Adding more non-wheat flour does not always solve the stickiness and may make the product tough.

• The cooking time and temperature may need adjustment but the product may still not develop the familiar golden browns of wheat flour baked goods. A light brush with beaten egg before baking might help.

household weights and measures (approximate)

results & conclusions from the scone bake-off

I am not aiming to beat the CWA at baking scones so please don’t judge my scones on appearances alone. I’m keen to know what you do to boost the nutrition of home-baked scones and what your results are from testing any of these non-wheat flours in baking. Share your recipes, thoughts and experiences over at FaceBook.

None of the new scone recipes tested are gluten-free because they all include wheat flour.

My goal is to bake a healthier scone not a gluten-free scone.

The benchmark for comparing quality and nutrition profiles is a simple wholemeal flour sultana scone, made with 100% wholemeal wheat flour.

• From a taste and texture angle, there’s no way I’d serve scones made with 100% flour from chickpeas, lupin, lentils or almonds. In my opinion and experience, these flours need to be blended with other flours to make a decent scone. Read on to find out how much of each flour I used in the scone recipes.
• None of these flours can replace wheat flour cup-for-cup in baking recipes. There is a distinct threshold for how much legume and lentil flour can be added before the scone recipe turns into something unappealing and less edible.
• For all the non-wheat flours tested, I needed to adjust the fluid in the basic scone recipe, add more raising agent to get lift, and extend cooking times. Add an extra teaspoon baking powder per 75 g legume/lentil flour used if you use self-raising wheat flour. If you use plain wheat flour, add 2 teaspoons baking powder per 150 g (about 1 cup) flour blend.
• From my kitchen experiments, the wise limit for using legume and lentil flours to make scones sits around 20% by weight. That means you replace one fifth of the wheat flour with a legume or lentil flour.

For example, if your original scone recipe includes 300 g wheat flour, make a flour blend with 60 g legume or lentil flour + 240 g wheat flour.

You can push past the wise limit (as I did in my experiments) for some of the legumes but the higher you go, the less likely you are to get a good tasting scone. I successfully pushed upwards to 30% for red lentil and chickpea flour but I suggest that a 20% replacement is the tastier limit.

the bottom line is ...

Because there is a low limit to how much non-wheat flour works in a scone recipe, the expected nutrition advantages over wholemeal wheat flour were lost. You simply can not put enough of the different flours in the mix to make a big nutritional difference.

A scone made with 100% wholemeal flour delivers as much nutritional punch as scones made with part wholemeal and part non-wheat flours. By using wholemeal wheat flour, you are more likely to cook a scrumptious familiar tasting scone (cake, bread or other baked item).

There is no advantage in combining non-wheat flours with white wheat flour. You may as well go half white, half wholemeal wheat flour.

Experimenting with non-wheat flours gives you a new opportunity to get more legumes, lentils and nuts into your diet and sneak them into the family meals.

Non-wheat legume and lentil flours are better suited to recipes that don’t need much rise: roti, chickpea flour dumplings, biscuits, crackers, and dense slices. I already regularly use chickpea flour and am keen to experiment further with red lentil flour and lupin.

Non-wheat flours tend to be more costly per kg (upwards to $22/kg) compared with wheat flour. For lower priced non-wheat flours, head to genuine Indian, African, Middle-eastern and Asiatic grocery shops because their cuisines routinely use many of the non-wheat flours. Check online for locally grown and produced red lentil and lupin flours.

For the best nutrition value for money, you can not go past using wholemeal wheat flour for baking, and whole legumes and lentils in meal preparation. It is easy (and cheaper) to cook up whole dried and lentils or use canned varieties in recipes for meals.

did the flours bake into good scones?

What flour proportions went into the final scone bake-off recipes?　

Scone 1. Wholemeal scone is 100% wholemeal wheat flour.

In my house, wholemeal scones are the winner. Scones made with all wholemeal wheat flour are excellent from both taste and nutrition angles. During mixing, judge whether you need to add more liquid to bring the flour together. Sometimes a splash more milk is needed when you use wholemeal flour.

Scone 2. Half n half scone is 50% wholemeal flour, 50% white wheat flour.

If this is your first step away from white wheat flour scones, start with a half and half split between wholemeal and white flours. With each fresh batch baked, bump up the wholemeal and reduce the white flour further to suit your tastebuds.

Scone 3. Red lentil flour scone is 30% red lentil flour, 70% wholemeal wheat flour.

Red lentil flour scones. For your first adventure into red lentil scones, start by replacing one fifth of the regular flour with lentil flour, either by weight or volume for a small batch. If you are happy with the results, next time push the amount of lentil flour up and replace up to almost one third of the regular flour with lentil flour. Add two flat teaspoons baking powder per cup of lentil flour. You may also need to add a tablespoon or so of extra liquid or an egg to make a dough that is not too stiff but take care that you don’t add too much extra liquid and end up with a sticky mess. Lentil scones do not brown up very well and emerge with a slight blush of pink-apricot colour throughout. They have an even texture and taste like a scone.

Scone 4. Chickpea scone is 30% chickpea flour, 70% wholemeal wheat flour.

Chickpea flour scones. Start with by replacing one fifth of the wheat flour with chickpea flour. Add baking powder to assist the rise. Chickpea flour is weird to work with in a scone dough. No matter which way I adjusted the fluid, the dough remained sticky and hard to handle like a drop scone and too sticky to roll out. I left the dough to mature for about 20 minutes before shaping. Straight from the oven, they smell quite beany but the aroma disappears once they cooled a little. Their yellow colour suggests egg yolks have been added. If you like the taste and texture, increase the amount upwards towards almost ⅓ chickpea flour.　

Scone 5. Lupin scones. One is 20% lupin flour, 80% wholemeal wheat flour. The other 30% lupin flour.

Lupin flour scones. Lupin scones had a slight beany aroma once cooked that dissipated on cooling. The lupin flour limit is less than lentils and chickpeas. Even at 20% substitution, the scones were denser than regular scones.I tried to push it higher but the result was poor. Higher amounts resulted in scones less pleasing to the palate. If you have never used lupin flour before, I suggest you start by replacing just one tenth (10%) of the wheat flour in a recipe and add more liquid. The lupin dough soaks up fluid and becomes drier on resting so start with a slightly wetter dough that usual. Cover the dough and set it aside for about 20 minutes before shaping. Even with raising agent added, the dough did not rise as much as the lentil and besan scones.

Scone 6. Almond scone is 25% almond meal, 75% wholemeal wheat flour.

Almond flour scones. Start by replacing one fifth (20%) of the regular flour with almond meal, either by weight or volume for a small batch. Even with extra baking powder, almond scones tend to be stubbier and denser than wheat scones. To get the nutritional benefits of nuts and a better textured scone, skip the almond meal and just add finely chopped almonds to a wholemeal scone dough or serve a nut butter spread at the table. Save almond meal for a rich cake, a breakfast booster sprinkled onto cereal or to add depth to a sauce.

Scone 7. Coconut scone is made by replacing half of the wholemeal flour with 20% by weight of coconut flour.

Coconut flour scones posed the biggest challenges and, many experimental batches later, proved the biggest disappointment. Packaging and manufacturers’ websites instructions are that 1 cup regular flour is replaced with only ⅓ cup coconut flour. That is only about 20% by weight of the wheat flour, i.e. replace 150 g wheat flour with only 30 g coconut flour. Coconut flour is very absorbent. That means you need to add more liquid and/or eggs to a recipe. I let the dough rest to allow the coconut flour to soak up fluid and swell before shaping and baking. The scones created did not have the familiar texture and form of wheat flour scones and were the least appealing. As expected, coconut flour adds coconut flavour but it would be easier (and nutritionally similar) to simply add a couple of tablespoons of desiccated coconut to a traditional scone dough.