Question

I purchased your chestnut bread a while ago (it's in the freezer) have you got any recipe's for this, do you add it to other flour? it's fascinating seeing you great flours and you told me to freeze to expand the shelf life, so I bought a load filling 2 draws in my freezer (it's an upright)great idea that and thank you again for that tip, so now I need to know how you use this chestnut flour I'd be grateful for an answer on it.

Answer

It is a lovely flour to work with and can lend its self to a variety of breads both sweet and savoury.

I have used it to produce a sour dough starter and then feed it to the main dough at 20% of the flour weight this way you can obtain those lovely sweet flavours that can complement the sour tang of the dough with a rich firm crust.

You can just add it to your white yeast ed dough at 10% of the flour weight.

I have used it in pancakes (scrummy) at 10% of the flour weight.

Then there is an enriched dough adding 15% butter 15% sugar and 10% Chestnut and 20% cranberry's and whole boiled chestnuts for a Christmas Loaf

Add it to your Victoria sponge by replacing 15% of the flour with the chestnut flour.

Use it as a filling in your danish pastry's by letting it down to make a past with a little stock syrup.

Try it in your dumplings with a little dried fruit sprinkled with dark brown sugar and butter when you have finished steaming it (a good winter food).

All of these recipes are good using chestnut as an added flavour and texture but because of the cost and the density of the product it is advisable to add no more than 10 to 15% of the flour weight as the product can start to be reduced in volume.

I have eaten bread made with 100% chestnut flour in France and it did complement a strong Cheese well.

Hope this helps

Happy Baking

Clive Mellum

Find Out More about Chestnut Flour in The Bakers Blog

Recipes for Chesnut Bread:

Richard Bertinet's Chestnut Flour Bread (Recipe by the French Master Baker from "Crust")

Bread maker chestnut loaf (A Shipton Mill recipe)

Italian Castagnaccio Chestnut cup cakes (A Reader recipe)

Chestnut Mini-Flatbreads (A Reader recipe)