Homemade Hazelnut Flour For Full GAPS

Homemade hazelnut flour starts with whole hazelnuts, warm water and sea salt. Soak the nuts, rinse and dry them completely, then grind them into a fine meal for Full GAPS baking. The finished flour should be dry and loose, with a fresh nutty smell.

This is a full-fat nut flour. You are keeping the nuts’ natural fat rather than pressing it out. It will have a different texture from a defatted flour, and its brown skins can leave small darker flecks in the meal.

I cook before leaving for second-shift work, with homeschooling and the rest of our weekday happening around the kitchen jobs. There is no regular bulk-prep routine in place right now, which makes the timing harder. This is one of those preparations to put on the calendar before you want to bake. The mixing is short, but an eighteen-hour soak followed by slow drying will not become a same-afternoon ingredient.

Ingredients

• 4 cups raw, shelled whole hazelnuts
• 1 tablespoon natural sea salt
• Warm filtered water, enough to cover the nuts by at least 2 inches

Start with fresh whole hazelnuts that have not been roasted, sweetened or coated. Remove any remaining shell pieces before measuring. Shells are not part of the four-cup amount.

The salt goes into the soaking water. You drain and rinse the nuts before drying, so that tablespoon is not a measured tablespoon of salt in the finished flour. Keep any salt called for in your later baking recipe separate.

The water is measured by coverage rather than by a fixed cup amount. Use a bowl large enough for the nuts, water and room above them. Spread-out nuts in a wider bowl need a different water volume from the same amount in a narrow bowl.

Four cups describe the starting nuts, not a promised four cups of finished flour. The amount you collect depends on drying and grinding. Measure the flour after it is finished when you use it in another recipe.

How To Make Hazelnut Flour

1. Put the measured raw hazelnuts in a large glass or ceramic bowl. Add warm filtered water to cover them by at least 2 inches. Add the sea salt and stir.
2. Cover the bowl with a plate or clean towel. Leave it on the counter to soak for 18 hours.
3. Drain the nuts in a colander and rinse well. Spread them out on a parchment-lined baking sheet in a single layer.
4. Dry in the oven at its lowest setting. Allow about 12 to 24 hours, checking for nuts that are dry through the center. Alternatively, use a dehydrator on its lowest setting. Drying time varies with the nuts, their soaking time and the equipment.
5. Let the dried nuts cool completely. Grind in small batches using a mill or food processor whose manufacturer permits dry nut processing. Stop and check the texture often so you collect a loose meal rather than a nut butter.
6. If needed, sift out larger pieces and grind those separately. Transfer the cooled, dry flour to airtight containers, label and freeze until needed for baking.

The nuts will take up water during the soak. Keep them covered by the water rather than starting with a bowl that is barely wet. The plate or towel covers the bowl without making this a sealed jar of flour.

Eighteen hours is the chosen soaking interval for this batch. The nut-soaking method in The Complete Cooking Techniques for the GAPS Diet gives a seven-to-twenty-four-hour range for most nuts and identifies eighteen hours within that guidance. This recipe uses hazelnuts; the shorter cashew instructions are a different preparation.

After draining, let the water run off before spreading the nuts onto the lined sheet. Keep them spread out rather than piled into a deep mound. The drying stage needs to remove the moisture they took up during soaking.

Use the oven’s actual lowest setting. There is no single temperature printed here because ovens differ. Start checking within the twelve-to-twenty-four-hour drying window, and judge the nuts themselves rather than stopping simply because a timer has ended.

Cool a sample nut before checking it. Break it open and look for a dry center. A damp or rubbery middle means it needs more drying. You want a nut that can become a dry meal, not wet pieces that smear together.

Cool the whole batch before grinding. Warm nuts and long processing can bring out the oils and turn the mixture toward a paste. Work in small batches and stop as soon as the meal is fine enough for the recipe you are making.

The flour should fall loosely from a spoon. It may have small brown flecks from the hazelnut skins, but it should not look glossy, wet or spreadable. Sifting gives larger pieces another pass through the grinder without repeatedly processing the fine meal.

Where It Fits On GAPS

In Gut and Physiology Syndrome, Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride includes hazelnuts among the nuts used for GAPS baking and says nuts need proper preparation before use. The book also describes drying prepared nuts. Monica Corrado’s The Complete Cooking Techniques for the GAPS Diet gives the measured salt-water soaking method and specifically describes drying soaked nuts before making baking flour.

This is a soaking-and-drying preparation. It does not use whey, yogurt, kefir or a fermentation starter. Do not turn the eighteen-hour soak into a multi-day flour ferment; that is a different method.

The 2020 GAPS book introduces nut baking after diarrhoea and abdominal pain have settled. Use the flour once hazelnuts and the recipe you intend to make fit your established foods. Preparing a flour does not assign an earlier Intro stage to every cake, loaf or muffin made from it.

For the broader preparation and stage discussion, see nuts and seeds on GAPS. This ingredient post keeps the actual soaking, drying and grinding together so you can follow one preparation from whole nuts to flour.

Using And Storing Hazelnut Flour

Measure this flour after drying and grinding. For the hazelnut sandwich bread, measure one and a half cups from the finished meal. Do not start with one and a half cups of whole nuts and assume the finished volume will be identical.

Use a recipe written for full-fat hazelnut meal. This is not a weight-for-weight promise for every other flour. Coconut flour, grain flours and defatted nut flours behave differently when mixed with eggs and fat.

For a recipe calling specifically for fermented almond flour, use the separate homemade fermented almond flour method. That recipe starts with a different nut and uses a different preparation. Keep its ingredient amounts with the recipe you are following.

Let the flour cool completely before sealing it. Trapping warmth and moisture in a closed jar works against the dry texture you just made. Label the container with its preparation date and keep it airtight in the freezer.

Take out what your baking recipe needs and close the container again. Grinding exposes more of the nut to air, which is why keeping the flour cold and well covered matters. There is no fixed finished-flour storage period promised by this recipe.

Recommended Equipment

You need a large glass or ceramic bowl, a plate or clean towel for covering it, a colander and a parchment-lined baking sheet. The oven is the main drying method. A dehydrator on its lowest setting is the other drying option.

The grinding equipment must be designed for dry nuts. Use a suitable nut mill or a food processor whose own instructions permit this job. A blender that requires added liquid is not the right way to finish a dry flour, since adding water changes it into a wet mixture.

Do not assume every attachment on a kitchen system can do dry grinding. The BN800-series guide for my Ninja BN801 excludes dry processing in its listed containers. This method does not direct you to use that appliance for the flour.

A fine sieve helps separate coarse pieces from the finished meal. Have dry, airtight storage containers and a spoon ready so the flour can be portioned and put away after it cools.

Frequently Asked Questions

Will Four Cups Of Nuts Make Four Cups Of Flour?

Not necessarily. Four cups is the raw nut starting amount. Drying and grinding change how the nuts pack into a measure. Check the finished volume rather than assigning a fixed flour yield.

Why Did The Nuts Turn Into A Paste?

Processing can release the nuts’ oils. Cool them before grinding, work in small batches and stop to check often. A glossy spread is nut butter, not the loose dry flour this method is making.

Can I Grind The Whole Batch At Once?

Four cups is the soaking quantity, not an instruction to put the whole batch into a machine. Follow the dry-nut capacity of your grinder and divide the nuts into smaller batches when needed. Empty out the fine meal between batches so it does not keep processing while the larger pieces are being broken down.

Can I Skip Drying And Grind Them Wet?

Wet nut mixtures have their own uses, but they are not this dry flour. Finish drying and cooling before grinding for a recipe that calls for a measured dry hazelnut meal.

The upcoming Weekly Kitchen Rhythm Planner in the WFLI shop puts longer preparations and baking on one weekly page. Schedule the soaking and drying before the day you want to use this flour in a loaf.