I'm always open to new flours... just not sure what the heck this stuff is. It just says "flour" and "Besan" on it.

Just went to google "besan" and this is what I found...I'd never heard of it before either...

Gram flour, not to be confused with Graham flour, is a type of flour made from pulverized chickpeas. It is a staple ingredient in Indian cuisine. It is also known as chana flour, besan, chickpea flour and garbanzo flour.

Gram flour contains carbohydrates and hence may not be suitable for low-carbohydrate diets, but it is suitable for gluten-free diets.

It is also used as a facial exfoliant, something that is very popular in India and Pakistan, by making a paste by mixing it with water and sometimes plain yogurt as well.

I just found a recipe for Indian Pakoras (something I've really missed) which uses chickpea flour, or in this case, Besan Flour. Next time I go to the store, I know I can look for this instead of just chickpea flour so that I can try it.

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Besan is a yellow lentil flour and chickpea flour is from chickpeas/garbanzo. Either can be used to make pakora. Both make a good coating to fry chicken.

This is one of my favorites. I use it for fried chicken and onion rings.

richard

We know what it is, it is flour made out of chick peas which I think you call garbanzo beans over there. We live on it, in India there's not a lot of gluten free stuff around. We make bread with Besan and brown rice flour that is nice enough, and you can make Chapatis with it but they are a bit dry, it is used in pakoras (you can make a batter out of it, dip any vegetable in it and deep fry).

They sell this at ethnic stores where I live. I first bought it at Jerusalem Market, but have seen it at some small India grocery stores too. It is heavy flour and the gentleman who sold it to me said it was to make "sweet breads and treats". His english was not good so when he started to try to tell me what to cook with it I was lost.

I suggest that you don't use more than 1/4 of this flour in your regular mixture the first time you cook with it. We made apple muffins and they were more heavy and a bit sticky and dense. The taste was not bad.

You will have to play around and see what the correct ratio is for your recipes. I think it is worth a try! At least this flour has protein in it and many gluten-free flours don't have much at all.