Chestnut Flour

[Mad Mike]

Any body else use this ?

Some slightly sweet bannocks I made with approx 3:5 Chesnut/Wheatflour
with Walnuts & raisans in went down well at the last Kent meet up.

I am off to get more supplies soon & can bring a small number of extra 500g bags back if anybody wants to try any? (I wont have room for a major group buy)

Pick up at next Kent meet or post

If this post is in the wrong place please move

 

[Toddy]

Sorry to hi-jack your thread, nice offer

I tried making my own chestnut flour, we have sweet chestnuts growing near us, but to be honest it wasn't very good and it was an awful lot of work. Has anybody else had a go at making from scratch?

Cheers,
Toddy

 

[Keith_Beef]

Sorry to hi-jack your thread, nice offer

I tried making my own chestnut flour, we have sweet chestnuts growing near us, but to be honest it wasn't very good and it was an awful lot of work. Has anybody else had a go at making from scratch?

Cheers,
Toddy

My brother in law tried it, from chestnuts picked up in the garden; they were very small, fiddly to peel, and a lot of work for very little flour.

To make it worthwile, you need to

• find a tree that gives big chestnuts
• make a roaster to make peeling easier

A roaster can be a length of iron pipe layed through the fire. You puch raw chestnuts in one end, and they come out roasted at the other. You need to judge the heat and the time correctly, but you get a continual throughput.


K.

 

[Mad Mike]

snip..chestnuts picked up in the garden; they were very small, fiddly to peel, and a lot of work for very little flour.

I agree drying , peeling , grinding , chestnuts is very labour intensive

Also I have read in more than one place that chestnuts in England don't ripen properly very often.

Its easier to peel acorns .... but then you have to boil out a lot of tanin :sulkoff:
Much easier to buy it off the shelf , chick pea flour also avalible , but it dosen't make such nice pancakes.Mmmmm pancakes

 

[Jjv110]

Hi,
Nothing bushcrafty but I thought I'd give you a recipie which uses chestnut flour.
It's called castagnaccio (kastanyacho) and it's from Liguria in italy.
Here goes:
350 gr. chestnut flour
3 spoons sugar
3 spoons sultanas
2 spoons pine nuts
cup of olive oil
pinch salt
1/4 litre milk.
Soak sultanas in warm water to soften. Put flour in bowl and add half cup of oil,the sugar and salt. Pour in cold milk and stir. Add strained sultanas and mix well. Butter a tray and cover it with breadcrumbs. make sure all parts are covered then empty excess crumbs. Scatter the pine nuts in the tray and the reamining oil. Pour in the flour mix and leave to rest for half an hour. Bake at 180 degrees until light crust forms on top. Serve warm or cold.

It's quite filling.

Julian.

 

[Jumbalaya]

Hi,

One of the probs. with chestnuts in the UK is that they are not of the same strain or variant as the commercial varieties which have been developend over the centuries in Sp., Fr. & It. Also, as one of the post mentions, the climate rarely gets hot enough here for a really good crop to develop.

Chestnut flour is, I believe, avail. on tesco.com or similar, and if you can find an Italian deli on the internet then they can usually supply. However, you sometimes find bags of dried whole chestnuts in Chinese supermarkets [as in London's Chinatown...my last bags cost £2.98 per 16oz bag]] which you could break up and then grind in a coffee grinder. However, don't expect your grinder to work to well grinding your caffeine fix next time as the dried chestnuts are tough b**s.

M

 

[Ketchup]

Indeed our climate is too cold for big chestnuts.

In Italy you have entire chestnut forests. I joined locals dining on chestnuts in the Alps. They had a special pierced (colanderlike) pan with a long handle which they filled with chestnuts and then held within a blazing fire, shaking all the time. The chestnuts did not explode, according to the locals, because the shell burned too fast to make steam on the inside (well, some did). The batch of chestnuts was then packed in a wet towel and left to rest for some ten minutes. After that the chestnuts were dead easy to shell and tasted great with some local white wine. The handled chestnut pan was of a deeper rim type than the ones you find for sale on the net, it could easily hold a Kg or two and could be suspendend from a chain in the chimney by a bucket type hinge (didn't find a picture on the net)

Italians used to survive on chestnuts, but chestnut recipes were associated with absolute poverty. It was mostly used in polenta but often added to the scarce flour they had to make the stock last longer.

You can find plenty recipes if you google for "farina di castagne" but learning Italian will be of good help. They are used in polenta, pasta, bread, tarts ...

 

[missy mycelium]

I collect chestnuts every year but I have to get there before all the wild pigs have got at them. The ones I get are usually a pretty good size. I have made chestnut flour before but agree it is a faff for very little end result. Much better to eat them hot from the fire.

 

[Mad Mike]

More Supplies avalibles soon if anyone wants any (more)

can be posted but postage is more than the flour

Or avalible at kent meets & I can bring some to forest knights 1st Aid Course
September

 

[WildeHilde]

Brand new to the forum here and to processing chestnuts .. I had a bunch sent to me in the husk and already dried.. so what should I do ..shell, boil then grind? Or can I grind them when hard like this? Then what about the tannin?