That’s some big talk from such an itsy-bitsy grain. Teff is, in fact, the smallest grain in the world. Native to Ethiopia, Teff remains a staple of the Ethiopian and Eritrean diets and is used to make injera, the region’s pancake-like flat bread. Compared to other grains, teff has a much larger percentage of bran and germ, making it another great source of fiber, protein and iron. It’s a great source of calcium too, not to mention boron, copper, phosphorus and zinc.

There are even some bragersons out there that claim that the easily absorbable iron in teff is the secret to those super-fast Ethiopian marathon-runners’ success. True or not, teff is a hearty little sucker. It can flourish in regions suffering from drought as well as in water-logged soil.

Whole grain teff is similar to millet or quinoa in cooking, and the flour can be used to make everything from traditional flat-bread to muffins, cookies and pie crusts. You can substitute up to 1/4 cup teff flour per cup of wheat flour in most baked-good recipes and it’s gluten free to boot.

Whether it’s the secret to a long-distance runner’s stamina, or just a great gluten-free alternative to wheat flour, know this: it makes amazing peanut butter cookies.

Need I say more?

Teff Peanut Butter Cookies

As much as I love natural-style peanut butter, it’s really not for baking. You can find good creamy and crunchy peanut butters without all the yucky hydrogenated oils, though — use them; they’re usually labeled for “kids.”

1-1/2 cups teff flour
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup honey
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup peanut butter (NOT natural style)

Preheat oven to 350F. In a large bowl combine flour and salt. In a separate bowl combine the rest of the ingredients and whisk vigorously until it becomes nice and smooth. If you have a food processor you can give the wet ingredients a whiz in there. Add the wet mixture to the dry ingredients and blend well. Shape dough into balls, about the size of a walnut. Place balls on an ungreased cookie sheet and flatten gently using the tines of a fork to make a criss-cross pattern on top of each cookie. Bake 12-15 minutes. Remove cookies to a wire rack to cool. Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

While many wheat sensitive folks can include spelt-based foods into their diet, spelt is not wheat-free and it does contain small amounts of gluten. However, it is incredibly water soluble which makes it easier to digest and means its nutrients are more easily absorbed into the system. Spelt is an excellent source of vitamin B2, manganese, and a decent source of niacin, thiamin, and copper, a combination of vitamins and minerals especially helpful to people dealing with migraine headaches and diabetes. It’s another great source of insoluble fiber, helping to prevent heart-disease and lower bad cholesterol.

Spelt berries can be cooked like rice and eaten as such. Spelt flour -simply the whole grain all ground up - can be used almost everywhere traditional wheat flour would be, from breads and pasta to cookies and treats. Spelt has a “fragile” gluten content, which means it probably won’t rise as well as wheat flour if you use it in traditional bread recipes. A better bet is to use it in recipes with another leavener i.e. eggs, baking powder, etc.

So, I nixed the bread idea and tried some muffins.

Date-Spelt Muffins

Nutty, light and just slightly sweet, these muffins rose to a perky golden brown in 12 minutes flat. If you don’t have any dates, or if you prefer raisins, use those. Next time I’ll fold in some nuts.

2-1/4 cups spelt flour
1/4 cup brown sugar, tightly packed
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp kosher salt
2/3 cup chopped medjool dates
1-1/4 cups milk or soymilk
3 eggs, beaten
1 Tbsp vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 425F. In a medium bowl combine all the dry ingredients and stir well. Toss the dates into the dry ingredients now to get them coated in the flour (this will help prevent the dates from sinking to the bottom of the muffins). In a separate bowl combine the wet ingredients. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour in the wet, stirring with a fork until just combined. Spoon batter into 12 greased muffin tins, filling each about 2/3 of the way full. Bake 12-15 minutes until risen and golden brown. Let cool for 5 minutes then gently loosen each muffin by running a thin knife around the edge. Serve warm or at room temp. Makes about 16 muffins.

Oat flour, sometimes called oat “flakes,” is simply ground up rolled oats. In fact, you can make your own oat flour by grinding rolled oats in a blender or food processor to a fine meal. Oat flour has all the same life-saving properties as the whole oat. High in soluble fiber and gluten-free, it is a terrific alternative to wheat flour and can almost always be substituted for regular flour in breads, pancakes, biscuits, scones and other baked goods. Plus, since we can grind our own, it won’t mean an extra trip to the market.

Baking with oat flour is also a great way to get some oats into the oatmeal-haters in your life, unknowing fellows who know not the pleasure of a steamy, filling bowl on that coldest of winter mornings. Now we can offer these fried chicken-n-biscuit types something good, and good for them, and they’ll never know the difference.

Saving lives, one alternative-flour laden baked good at a time.

Oat Flour Biscuits

2 cups oat flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp Sugar
1/3 cup shortening (preferably a non-hydrogenated brand like Spectrum)
1/4 cup milk or soy milk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a large bowl, whisk together all the dry ingredients. Using your fingers, work the shortening through the dry mixture until it resembles a coarse meal. Slowly stir in the milk until you have a soft dough. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and pat into a disc, about a half-inch thick. Using a two-inch circle cutter, cut out biscuits and transfer them to a parchment-lined baking sheet. Gather up the leftover dough, working it as little as possible, and cut out as many more biscuits as you can. Bake about 15 minutes until golden. Serve warm. Makes 8-10 biscuits.

Quick! Before the rhubarb is gone for another year, grab a few stalks and that enticingly red and juicy carton of strawberries and get to work. This jam is fast and easy, great swirled into yogurt or smeared on toast. If you’re into canning, you know what to do. For the rest of us, we’ll just keep it in a nice airtight container in the fridge where it should keep for several weeks. Let’s jam.

5 Stalks Rhubarb, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
1 lb strawberries, hulled and coarsly chopped
1/2 cup sugar
pinch salt
Juice of 1 Lemon

In a medium sauce pot, add just enough water to cover the bottom evenly. Set the pot over medium-high heat and toss in the rhubarb. When the water starts to boil, turn the heat down to medium-low and cover. Simmer for about 6-8 minutes, until rhubarb starts to fall apart, mashing the rhubarb a bit with a whisk or a potato masher to help it break down. Add the strawberries, sugar, salt and lemon juice and continue to mash. Bring mixture to a boil and cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Turn the heat to low. At this point, you’ll see some foam at the top. Skim the foam off and discard it (it will make your jam cloudy if you don’t). Simmer mixture for about 10-15 minutes, until stawberries have broken down and jam is slightly thickened. Remove from heat. Let jam cool to room-temp then transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate. Makes about 3-1/2 cups.

Masa is Spanish for “dough,” and is traditionally used to make corn tortillas. It is made with sun or fire-dried corn kernels that are then soaked in limewater. After that the corn is ground to make dough. Masa harina (literally “dough flour”) is dried masa which is then ground to make flour. It can be used to make tortillas, tamales, pupusas and other traditional Central and South American dishes. Masa harina can be found in most major supermarkets next to the other flours, and can be kept in the fridge, snuggly wrapped, for up to six months.

While I didn’t find masa on lists of alternative flours, I did find corn flour, cornmeal and maize flour all listed to be wheat-free and gluten-free. I’m guessing then that means masa is too. Corn is a great source of fiber and nutrients too, and you can even run your car on it (check out Lauren’s post). That’s the good news. The bad news is the soaking in limewater (water mixed with calcium oxide). So despite the benefits of corn itself, I’m just a little sketched out about eating caustic stuff. Is that wrong?

I’m not sure masa harina needs to be on the top of our list of alternative flours to run out and try. But, if you do have difficulty with wheat or gluten, or just a yen for pupusas, it might be nice for a change. Mom always said when it comes to food, “you have to try everything once.” So, caustic or not, tonight I’m making her Arepas.

Arepas

Ridiculously easy to make, arepas are really just corncakes on a griddle. You can serve them sweet, think pancakes, or savory, topped with salsa, avocado or a sprinkle of your favorite (soy) cheese. I like them straight up, and hot off the griddle.

1 cup masa harina
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp sugar (optional)
1/2 cup warm water
Butter or non-stick spray for cooking

In a medium bowl stir the masa harina, salt and sugar together with a fork. Add the water and stir until everything is well combined. Let the mixture rest for about 5 minutes. The flour will expand a little and you’ll have a nice soft dough to work with. Heat a griddle (or a large sauté pan) over medium-high heat. Using your hands pat a small amount of dough into a 3 inch diameter circle, about a half inch thick. Repeat with the remaining dough. Melt the butter in the pan, or spray with the non-stick stuff. Fry arepas until golden brown on one side, about 5 minutes, flip and fry until golden on the other. Serve hot. Makes about 5 arepas; Serves 2-3.

You’ve probably heard that oats are a terrific source of soluble fiber. Some even say that eating a bowl of “a certain brand of oats” every day may significantly reduce your cholesterol. They’re right.

There I was in the baking aisle at my local natural food giant. Now, I must tell you, I’ve been overwhelmed before at the market–chard or kale? Beets or carrots? But this flour situation was something new entirely. I mean, at least I can tell the difference between a beet and a carrot. In front of me sat a tempting assortment of boxes and sacs filled with a rainbow of grainy substances, some coarse, some fine, some identifiable and some completely unrecognizable. There was amaranth, buckwheat, cornmeals yellow and blue, spelt, soy, and one called “teff” (we’ll cover that another time). Ok, we had options, but what to do with them all? I figured best to start the experimenting at A and work my way through the alphabet. First up: Almond flour.

Almond flour, also called almond meal, is really just blanched almonds that have been ground to a powder. Almonds are believed to have originated in the Middle East but these days they are grown all over the world. During the middle-ages almond meal was used as a thickener, in place of wheat flour, and as a base for cakes and puddings. Today, almond flour is fairly common in sweet and savory dishes, especially with the growing awareness of gluten and wheat allergies as well as the low-carb diet craze.

High in calcium, protein and vitamin E, almond flour lends a moist texture and subtle nuttiness to baked goods. It is higher in fat than most flours but most of that is monounsaturated (read “good”) and is actually proven to lower your LDL (read “bad”) cholesterol. You can use almond meal as a substitute for all-purpose flour is savory dishes as well, as a breading for meats or veggies or, like ye olde days, making gravy. However you use it, just remember to keep the almond flour in the fridge–it’s made from nuts and that means it spoils easily.

Used in combination with other flours or all by itself, almond meal is a great place to start trying new and different types of flour. If you have an allergy, an aversion, or just a hankering for something new, stay with me as I explore the universe of alternative flours. I have a feeling everything’s going to be just fine.

Almond Macaroons

These cookies are so pretty no one will believe how easy they are to make. If you like, you can start with whole almonds and grind them yourself (start with 1 pound). Either way, these cookies are sweet, delicate and perfect with a cup of spiced tea.

3 cups Almond flour
1/2 cup egg whites
2-1/2 cups granulated sugar
1/4 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Pinch salt
1 egg white
Sliced almonds for garnish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a large bowl, mix the almond flour with 1/4 cup of the egg whites until well blended using a wooden spoon (alternately you can do this on a standing mixer fitted with a paddle attachment). Add the sugar, extracts, salt and the rest of the egg whites and mix well to combine.

Using a teaspoon or a tablespoon (depending on how big you want your cookies) drop spoonfuls of the batter onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper (or greased lightly with non-stick spray).

Using a flat bottomed glass or measuring cup press each cookie firmly until it’s about 1/4 inch thick. Using a pastry brush (or your fingers) brush each cookie lightly with a little of the egg white. Press the sliced almonds on top in any pattern that you like. Bake cookies at 350 degrees about 12-15 minutes rotating the baking sheet halfway through the process.

Allow cookies to cool completely on the baking sheet before removing them. Enjoy immediately or store in an airtight container for up to 3 days.