Guide To Using Chickpea Flour in Gluten-Free Baking

Is Chickpea Flour Gluten-Free?

Yes, chickpea flour itself is 100% gluten-free so it is suitable for those with coeliac disease or a gluten intolerance / sensitivity.

However, it’s always worth checking labels both for the flour and for chickpea flour products. Even a recipe which is traditionally made with chickpea flour might also include wheat flour so always check.

Flavour

Chickpea flour has a distinctive earthy legume flavour and does taste like chickpeas. It can make your sweet bakes a little bitter so use judiciously in those. I find I achieve the most success if used in savoury recipes – pastry or pie crusts is a particular favourite or flatbreads.

However, if you keep the amount low (under 30%) then you will find you can use it in some sweet recipes too without the chickpea flavour being too overpowering. This is often a subjective choice.

As a rule chickpea flour is best paired with strong savoury and earthy flavours:

Spices, fresh herbs, garlic, onions, lemon and tahini or cheese (particularly strong cheese like feta).

If you wanted to use it in sweet recipes then choose it for strong flavours like chocolate, coffee, banana or highly spiced bakes.

Nutritional Profile

The main reason for including chickpea flour in your gluten-free baking recipe is its high protein content (about 20g per 100g / 1 cup). That means it can give bakes excellent structure and texture. It helps with elasticity in doughs due to those strong protein bonds.

It's also rich in fibre, is a great source of complex carbohydrates, and significant levels of iron, potassium and folate.

Read more >>> U.S Department of Agriculture.

Can You Use As A Substitute For All-Purpose Flour?

It’s not the best choice for a direct wheat flour substitution. Although it does have a high protein content it doesn’t have the kind of uniquely strong elastic bonds which is what gives gluten its superpower.

It also doesn’t have the same neutral flavour so you need to choose what you use it for carefully unless you want all your food to taste of chickpeas.

Therefore in baked goods it’s better to blend the chickpea flour with another flour to neturalise the flavour a little and balance out its inadequacies.

You can use it as a direct substitute though in coating meat, fish and veggies for a crisp crust.

Chickpea Flour Uses 

Chickpea flour is the traditional choice for using in bhajis and falafel as it’s great at binding and these recipes make the most of its delicious flavour.

It’s often used across Indian cuisine like the sweet bake, puran poli and is also known for being the main ingredient in socca, the chickpea pancake/flatbread which originates from southern france.

However, chickpea flour can also be used in the following ways:

• as a thickening agent for soups, stews and sauces due to its starch content.
• as a binder for veggie burgers.
• as a key ingredient in dumplings, noodles or homemade pastas as it’s a light flour which cooks up smoothly with no grittiness.

Baking With Chickpea Flour

If you want to use chickpea flour in gluten-free baking, which I highly recommend you do as because of its high protein content is excellent at giving baked goods structural integrity and a soft moist texture, then it is best to use it as part of a balanced flour blend. I love using it as it helps avoid using xanthan gum or guar gum as its high protein content gives a tender crumb and helps to bind (which is what xanthan gum does).

It's also a very light and fine flour so does blend very well and although doesn’t necessarily help bakes to rise it doesn’t weigh the bake down.

If you are new to this flour try using it at 30% of the total amount of flour to give support to the blend. Mixing it with 30% wholegrain and 30% starchy flours for a great mix.

✨For a beginner's guide on blending flours and creating your own flour blends visit this >>> Introduction to Gluten-Free Flours.✨

It is more usual to see chickpea flour in savoury baked goods due to its flavour profile and I love it in the hot water crust pastry for these pork pies and the flaky pastry in these sausage rolls.

Actually I do find that this flour is rather good across a range of other bakes too. I have used it in sweet dough recipes (when I wanted a flour with high protein for the soft dough but wanted to avoid almond flour) and I have also used it in these Gluten-Free Ladyfingers as they gave a very light crisp cookie. The flavour wasn’t too noticeable in the cookies by themselves and completely went away when I used them in a tiramisu.

Using Chickpea Flour As A Substitute

Nut allergy. Due to its high protein content, which is similar to almond flour, it can be an excellent substitute if you have a nut allergy. Therefore I often recommend it (with caveats depending on the flavour profile of the recipe and how much is needed) as an almond flour substitute in sweet recipes.

Oat flour. Chickpea flour is a great alternative to oat flour as they both have a similar softness. However, its flavour is much more aggressive than oat flour so check whether it would be suitable for your recipe.

Quinoa flour. Chickpea flour is also a good option if you don't like (or can't have) quinoa flour. It has a similar flavour profile but not nearly as bitter and keeps the protein content high.

How To Make Chickpea Flour At Home

It is possible to make homemade chickpea flour using a high-speed blender (or grain mill) using dried chickpeas.

The weight of dried chickpeas will be roughly the same as the amount of chickpea flour it will produce. For example if you need 100g chickpea flour then grind about 110g dried chickpeas which allows room for losing some of the chickpeas in the process.

• Place the dry chickpeas in the blender and process at high speed until they form a fine powder.
• Sift the resulting chickpea flour and discard the larger pieces that didn’t grind well.
• Use the chickpea flour as per recipe or store in a cool dry place until needed.

Chickpea Flour Substitute

When you are substituting gluten-free flours for each other it is best to do so within their categories.

Chickpea flour is a legume flour so you can swap it for another legume flour which will have a similar role. However, the flavour might be slightly different. Chickpea flour is the least obtrusive of the legumes and has a more neutral colour.

✨My FREE 'Gluten-Free Flour Cheatsheet' is a PDF download which splits all the gluten-free flours into categories so you can easily see what categories they belong to and how you might substitute them.✨

The best substitute for chickpea flour though is almond flour. This is a nut flour but legume flours and (most) nut flours have similarly high protein contents so they swap out well for each other. Almond flour also has a versatile flavour profile and is neutral in colour like chickpea flour. 

However, I would particularly recommend swapping chickpea flour for defatted almond flour if you can get it. Regular almond flour has a higher fat content so there could be issues with this unless you slightly adapt the recipe. Defatted almond flour though is a straight 1:1 substitution. Read this >>> if you are unsure on the differences between almond flour and defatted almond flour.