You may or may not remember the post I made a few months ago about the homemade almond milk (which I intend to update the next time I make almond milk, actually). At the bottom of the post, I mention the byproduct being almond meal/flour. Today, I’m going to talk a little more about that. A couple days ago, I got a Mr. Coffee Coffee Grinder. But it’s not to grind coffee beans.
To make the almond flour:
Step 01: Remember your leftover almond meal?
Spread it on a baking sheet.
Step 02: Stick it in the oven at 200°F for 2-3 hours or until it’s completely dry. If you choose to store yours in the freezer and it’s not completely dry, it will crystallize, stick together, and become completely useless.
Step 03: Remove from the baking sheet and put in a container until you’re ready to use it.
I thought I was done there, but the problem with the almond meal after it’s finished baking is that it’s really clumpy. Like this:
See all those large pieces? Those make baking difficult. So I just stuck it in the freezer until I could think of what else to do with it.
But then I heard about people making their own wheat flour using coffee grinders and I thought, “That should work the same way with almond flour, right?” Right. And it worked so well!
Almond Flour
- coffee grinder
- almond meal
- container
- 1 tbsp for measuring
Step 01: Even though you may not be using your coffee grinder to grind coffee beans, read the directions. You may find something useful. For instance, my directions said that my coffee grinder would only grind 11 tbsps of coffee beans or coffee grounds. See? Useful already. 🙂 So I put 11 tbsps of almond meal into the top of my coffee grinder.
Step 02: Place the lid on the grinder and pulse until the meal is fine.
Step 03: Remove the lid and check your meal. It should be soft and fine. Actually, it should feel exactly like regular flour.
Step 04: Empty the grinder into your container. Repeat these four steps until all of your almond meal is completely ground.
“But what if I don’t want to make almond milk just to get almond meal? I don’t like the taste and/or it’s a huge pain.”
Good point!
Another alternative is to put almonds through the grinder (though take the maximum amount the grinder will hold, halve it, and put that much in), grind until the meal is relatively fine. Put that through a sifter, dump whatever is still large and chunky into the grinder, grind again, and then dump all of it back into the grinder until it is the consistency you want. Be careful with raw almonds, though. Because of the moisture content, they’re more likely to turn into almond butter…apparently. My recommendation, truly, is to go with the almond milk method. I’m unhappy with the meal I’ve gotten from raw almonds, but my almond milk flour is absolutely perfect.
Looks like I need to start posting some almond flour recipes. 😀
