29.5 Almond and other nut flours

A nut flour is nuts ground fine enough to be used like flour. Almond and hazelnut are the two you will see most. There is no wheat in them, so there is no gluten either.

Flour or meal?

Cooks use both names for one product: almond flour is also called almond meal. Almond meal is blanched almonds ground into a powder. "Flour" is a loose word here: the product is really ground almonds, coarser than milled flour, and it forms clumps easily.

The grind also changes from one producer to the next. Almond flours are not all ground alike, so a different one used in the same amount may not give quite the same result, although a similar grind should still work.

No gluten, so structure comes from elsewhere

With no gluten to develop, a batter made mostly of almond flour cannot be overmixed. Even an hour of mixing would do an almond doughnut batter no harm.

Something else must hold the bake up. Macarons contain no grain at all. Beaten egg white, a meringue, gives them the light, airy body that a wheat cookie gets from gas trapped in a web of gluten. see chapter 15: What eggs do in a recipe Other recipes add a little wheat flour: some financiers take some all-purpose flour for extra structure. Some almond flour recipes turn out dense and heavy.

Flavor and texture

Almond flour tastes nutty. Amaretti take plenty of sugar because the almond meal is so nutty that it needs balancing. Yet in a doughnut where almond flour is most of the batter, the almond does not take over, and the crumb is close to a cake doughnut's.

A smaller amount changes a dough's texture. Added to a tart crust, some gives more flavor and a crumbly bite. It is not only for sweets: almond meal can be scattered over stuffed peppers in place of breadcrumbs, for a nutty character.

Handling it

• Break up clumps. Sift almond flour if it looks lumpy, or whisk it with the other dry ingredients and rub out the lumps with your fingers.
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• Grind it finer with sugar. For macarons, sift almond flour with powdered sugar, whiz the two in a food processor, then sift and whiz again, three times in all. The finer powder helps give smooth tops. Do not try the recipe without a scale.
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• Let a wet batter rest. Rest a clafoutis batter for several hours, or better overnight. Baked straight away, the almond flour may not have fully taken up the liquid, and the texture can be gritty.
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• Toast it for more flavor. Toast almond flour in a 350°F oven before it goes into a tart dough. Spread it thin, and watch it: a powder this fine burns easily, and if it gets very dark it turns a little bitter. It is ready when it smells of toasted almonds.
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Where cooks use it

• Financiers, small cakes built on almonds and browned butter. The quality of the almond meal is one of the two things that make them. One approach starts with tant pour tant: powdered sugar and almond meal mixed in equal parts.
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• Macarons and other nut meringue cookies. Italian amaretti, ricciarelli and pignoli are all almond meringue cookies.
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• Frangipane cake. Almond flour mixed into a creamed butter batter makes a frangipane shortcake. see chapter 34: The creaming method
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• Sweet tart dough, where a little toasted almond flour adds flavor.
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• Clafoutis, a baked fruit batter that sits somewhere between cake and custard.
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Other nut flours

Hazelnut is the other common nut meal. Other nut flours, pistachio among them, can stand in for almond in amaretti. Pistachios sometimes replace almonds in macarons, and American cooks later swapped in shredded coconut, which botanically is not a nut.

For a cook avoiding nuts, leave the almond flour out of the tart dough and add a third of a cup more all-purpose flour instead.