Right now this list is for the San Francisco Bay Area — if I get enough comments with information for your town and state I’ll build another national section
Black: Whole grain flour Red: Bean or lentil Green: Nut or seed
Berkeley Bowl (East) 2020 Oregon St, Berkeley, CA
Bin Flours: Almond meal, Brown Rice (organic), Chickpea (garbanzo), Corn (organic), Cornmeal (organic), Masa harina (organic), Oat (organic) Polenta (organic) Pumpernickel/Rye(organic), Rye (organic), Semolina, Soy (organic), Tapioca, Whole Wheat (organic)
Packaged Flours (aisle #1): Almond meal, Amaranth, Barley, Blue corn meal, Brown Rice, Buckwheat, Chickpea (garbanzo), Coconut, corn, Potato, Quinoa, Rye, Spelt, Whole Wheat, Yellow corn meal
Berkeley Bowl (West) 920 Heinz Ave, Berkeley, CA Probably the same as Berkeley Bowl East, but I haven’t been there recently to check
Bombay Spice House, 1036 University Ave/10th st & Milan, 900 University/9th st, Berkeley, CA
Bombay Spice house has packaged items, Milan has both packaged and bin items. Indian stores have ground lentil and bean flours you can’t buy anywhere else.
At WebMD, in “How Save is Imported Food?”, India was listed as second to China in FDA rejected shipments. None of these flours are organic. The foods most commonly rejected are: vegetables and vegetable products; fishery and seafood products; spices, flavors and salts; and candies. But not flour, whole lentils, and beans, so I think these are probably okay — they’re certainly a lot less expensive than most grocery stores. If you’re going to mill the softer legumes in a coffee & spice mill, you could soak them in water a while, drain, and wait for them to dry out a bit.
Packaged Flours: Rajgaro (Amaranth) $2.50/14 oz, Kuttu (Buckwheat) $4/2 lbs, Bajri (Millet) $2.50/2 lbs, Urad flour (ground split matpe beans a.k.a. black beluga lentils), Mung/Moong bean $4/2 lbs, Singoda (water chestnut) $3/14 oz, Dhokla (rice 64%, chickpeas 16%, pigeon peas 10%, lentils 10%) $3/2lbs, Handhwa flour (chickpea, rice, pigeon peas, lentil)
2 Responses to Where to buy Flour: Whole Grain, Bean, Corn, Nut, etc.