Introducing a Revolutionary New Product — Coffee Flour
Get to know Coffee Flour, an intriguing new product you’re going to be seeing a lot of.
Did you know that for every pound of coffee beans produced, there’s nearly an equal amount of waste created?
Coffee Flour aims to tackle that immense problem. It is the first company to dry and finely mill that pulp waste on a large scale to create a type of flour that has five times the fiber of whole wheat flour and more iron than any other grain.
Surprisingly enough, the resulting flour tastes nothing like coffee, either. Instead, the gluten-free coffee flour tastes heavily of citrus and cherry.
In fact, the company, which has offices in Redwood City, sent me some chocolate cookies made with the flour to try.
Chocolate cookies made with 15 percent coffee flour (foreground) and 20 percent coffee flour (back).
If I didn’t know better, I would have sworn there were cherries in them. The one made with 15 percent coffee flour tasted as if there were dried cherries in the dough, while the one made with 20 percent coffee flour tasted as if concentrated cherry puree had been mixed in throughout.
Coffee Flour does not yet sell the flour, itself, to consumers. But it hopes to market baking mixes with the flour incorporated into it sometime next year. Meantime, other artisan food producers are spotlighting the coffee flour in products now on store shelves.
To find out more about this unique ingredient, including which food products you can find it in now, and what Google chefs have been doing with it, read my story in this past Sunday’s Chronicle food section.
I’ve never heard of coffee flour! Sounds really interesting. Hope they market it to consumers one of these days. Sounds like a fun ingredient!
Wow! That flour sounds amazing.
Cheers,
Rosa
What is it made of other than the pulp waste of coffee? It looks pretty. But you lost me on the fact that it doesn’t smell like coffee. I love the aroma of coffee!
@Ben
It’s not made of anything else, actually! Coffee beans, before they’re roasted, are the pits of a cherry-like fruit. The fruit itself is normally discarded, but these folks have started drying it out and pulverizing it. That’s why it smells and tastes nothing like coffee; it’s just like how any other fruit wouldn’t smell or taste like its pit/seeds.
Anyway, it’s actually not the first fruit to do this. Coconut flour follows a similar principle; coconut flesh is dehydrated and milled into a powder, which can then be baked with. From what I’ve heard in other articles, coffee flour and coconut flour behave in very similar fashions, baking-wise; they require a lot of moisture to hold the finished product together, but they’re very nutritious!
what type of caffeine does this flour have?
Jane: It has about the same amount of caffeine as dark chocolate. So, not very much relatively speaking.
Never heard of coffee flour. I can’t wait for it to hit the store to try. Thank you for the share. 🙂
I wonder what happened to my comment that I posted. I love this idea of coffee flour and would love to get my hands on some. I emailed the company but haven’t heard back from them. I’d love to make some dishes to see how they turn out. Do you think it’s similar to espresso powder of totally different?