You don't know beans about legume flours

“A selected combination of soaking, germinating, and enzyme treatment allows oligosaccharides (such as stachyose and raffinose) to be reduced by 35 to 60 percent, depending on the concentration of oligosaccharide that was present in the bean originally,” says Dolan.

Heartland Ingredients is a joint venture of the Michigan Edible Bean Co-op and the Minnesota farmer alliance FarmConnect. The business was built as an outlet for bean-based products and is designed to meet the needs of those who require a gluten-free diet. The organization is just over a year old, and its first products are now beginning to reach the marketplace. Heartland offers six types of gluten-free pasta, navy bean flour and pinto bean flour.

Jim LeCureux, general manager of Heartland, claims the market segment is growing at a rate of about 18-20 percent per year – growing in part by the improving ability to diagnose celiac disease. The emphasis on whole grains and low glycemic index has helped expand the category as well.

“The pasta products are well accepted,” he says. “Most celiac patients welcome them, and say they taste what they remember pasta tasting like before they embarked on a gluten-free diet.”

Along with the development of ingredients aimed at special users has been the wider interest in organic foods. Beans are a natural for this segment.

Purcell Mountain Farms (www.purcellmountainfarms.com), Moyie Springs, Idaho, is an organic producer using the Unifine Milling Process, which reduces beans to a fine powder in air and prevents heat build-up. Purcell’s garbanzo bean flour (also called chana dal or gram flour) retains the natural oils, producing 10 calories of fat per ¼ cup serving (32 g).

Purcell Mountain will grind any beans to order. “We’ll make any kind of bean flour that is required,” says Sabina Dahlman, co-owner of the business. “We use the cool process mill to avoid getting the flour hot, so the oils stay in place and taste good.” About the garbanzo bean flour, she adds, “Chefs particularly like the product. It tastes good, and is easy to use.”

NOTE TO R&D Using bean flour in foods isn’t quite as simple as a pound-for-pound replacement. For one thing, bean flour may be made by different processes that change water absorption and cooking time. If the flour is produced by stone grinding, the heat generated may reduce the water absorption and may affect the stability of oils in the flour, requiring addition of antioxidants. If the flour is made by precooking the beans into a paste and grinding the paste, the cooking time of the final food may be shorter. And a number of producers are working with extruders, so that products may be partially pre-cooked. Depending on the way they are processed, bean flours will behave differently in complex systems, as will flours made from different beans. Your manufacturer can tell you, generally, how the selected product is likely to work in mixed systems.