Darrell Owens

Ellendra Nauriel wrote:

Darrell Owens wrote:I've grown chickpeas in the winter here in zone 8/9, so you should be able to get a decent crop in a zone 5 summer.

I don't think it's so much a question of "will it grow?" as it is "will it produce enough to be worth the effort?"

My first attempt at growing chickpeas, a 10-ft row produced 5 pods, total. I have tried a few times since, with varying degrees of success, the best one averaging 12 pods per plant. Still looking for the right combination of variety and technique to get a better crop for the work.

Oh, man, I'm sorry to read that. Even though the birds and other critters of the field knew they were ready long before I did, I got quite a bit more than that. I wonder if maybe it was the heat for you then. Chickpea pollen is sensitive to high temps over about 30C/86F. If it goes much higher than that, yields drop quite a bit. Maybe try planting it a little later so that it's flowering in later summer/early fall and the pollen won't have to deal with the summer highs. That's why I planted mine as a winter crop.

I've grown chickpeas in the winter here in zone 8/9, so you should be able to get a decent crop in a zone 5 summer. My Wondermill Jr does a fine job grinding them, as well.

I've had a lot of failed bread experiments, often with a good flavor but collapsed or just never rose. If those can be called bread, then socca is definitely bread. :)

I love acorns and use them mostly along with wheat flour in leavened breads, but they can be the star of the show in flatbreads or pancakes. I cold water leach them and grind them in a hand-cranked mill. The flavor pairs well with mesquite flour, IMHO.

I tend to use bur and several species of red oak acorns. The bur oak acorns have to be processed or dried immediately or they spoil (I usually dry them in the shell). When I'm ready to use them, I'll crack them with a nutcracker (or hammer if their caps are thick), then soak the nuts for a couple days until they're rehydrated. Then, I shred them in my food processor to increase surface area and speed up the leaching.

From the food processor, they go into a cloth sack and a tea pitcher for leaching. That part usually takes several days, but could probably be shortened if I changed the water more than once a day. The first few times, I pour the leach water into a large bowl to collect the starch. Once the amount of starch I pour off drops to almost nothing, I stop collecting it. Once they're leached, they get dried again then sent through the mill.

There's some traditional flatbreads made from chickpeas, but I don't know how that would translate to a loaf. I've used a little bit of lentil flour in loaf bread before, but it was still mostly wheat flour.

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Very cool to have something like this available. Not much wheat grown in my area. Thank you for sharing.