Posted by glutenfr | Posted in New products, News, Science | Posted on 21-10-2012
Tags: New products, scientific developments
Gluten Free Family loves to stay abreast of important breaking news and with this in mind we’d like to bring you up to speed on green banana flour, a promising new wheat flour substitute that could hit Australian shelves within a year.
Though we have yet to get our hands on this odd sounding stuff (which is basically dried ground bananas) international scientists have officially declared it yummy.
Brazillian researchers made some pasta using this flour, plus some egg whites, water and guar and xanthan gums and tested it out on coeliac and non-coeliacs. Not only did it prove popular with the wheat-free crowd, 60% of the wheat quaffers liked it too.
Bonus: it’s nutritional status is said to be as good if not better than wheat-based products, and it can of course be used to make other products like bread, biscuits and pizza dough.
More great news: it will soon be produced commercially in Australia. A Northern Queensland farmer is already making the flour from the pulp of lady fingers (chosen for their higher starch content), with plans to produce commercial-scale batches within a year.
But all good things come at a price it seems. At present one kilo of the stuff costs $16, so we won’t be going too bananas over it in the short term.
Mandy
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I once heard that bananas are one of the very few foods that can replace the prebiotic qualities of wheat fibre.
I had a terrible case of IBS after I decided to buy lots of lollies and found that nothing got it under control – until I ate 5 bananas a day.
So maybe there’s some connection between the texture of wheat and banana-based products. I find banana bread one of the easier things to make GF.
That is very interesting. We’ll most certainly be keeping tabs in this issue…
Yes, very interesting. Any tips for making the banana bread? I got a recipie off the Coles website, but it has 1 cup of dessicated coconut, which sounds a bit much to me, I imagine that’d be like a mouthful of hay. Do you need that?
Agreed! We don’t have a recipe – but here’s a nice looking one from our friends at Fig & Cherry:
http://www.figandcherry.com/recipes/sweet-treats/gluten-free-banana-bread/
Awesome, thanks, I’ll try it. Can you substitute something for the coconut flour? Like potato flour?
I’m not sure as this product has yet to hit the shelves. Looking forward to trying it though!
Sorry Penny – I just reread your question – here’s a link I found that might be of use…
http://nourishedkitchen.com/baking-with-coconut-flour/