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MAY 22, 2020
Vegetable Flour - The Healthy Flour Alternative
Nowadays, many people are looking for healthy flour alternatives to implement into their diets. The nutrition and benefits that can be found in vegetable flours are amazing! Not to mention, there have been countless studies showing that white flour can lead to a rise in bad cholesterol and even contribute to obesity. While whole wheat flour is an alternative, it isn't for those that are looking to remove or eliminate gluten from their diets. Also, there is the process of refining white and wheat flours that can strip away more than half of the vitamins and minerals present in them. Luckily, there are healthy flour alternatives. By swapping traditional flour with various types of vegetable flours, you will be able to experience all of the healthy goodness and benefits the vegetables have to offer in place of traditional store-bought flour. Below, we will be going over some of the benefits of using vegetable flours. The Many Benefits Of Vegetable Flours Vegetable flours are a healthy flour alternative that helps you get the nutrition you need. They are the perfect choice for every recipe that calls for flour from bread, cupcakes, muffins, pie crusts, noodles, and so much more. When you use vegetable flours in your baking and cooking routine, you get added benefits that you would not get from using regular flour. Gluten-Free Unlike some of the other flours on the market like whole grain or wheat flour, you won't have to deal with gluten. Every vegetable flour is a good choice for those that are looking to avoid gluten intake or for those that have actual gluten allergies. This is an excellent choice for those that are looking for an all-around flour replacement for everyday cooking and baking. Fiber Packed Vegetable flours are jam-packed full of healthy soluble fiber. The benefit of added fiber to your diet can make a huge difference for your body. Fiber helps your body maintain healthy bowels, reduce cholesterol levels, control blood sugar levels, and aids in a healthy weight. Full Of Nutrients Vegetable flours are packed full of nutrients. Because you are getting extra vegetables by using vegetable flours you get the benefits you would get from eating the vegetables alone. By using vegetable flour as your healthy flour alternative, you add antioxidants and superfood nutrients to your daily diet. Low Glycemic Index Unlike white flour, which can wreck your blood sugar levels, vegetable flours provide added benefits. All vegetable flours help to reduce your blood sugar levels which inherently makes them healthier flour alternatives. Spikes in your glucose levels can result in increased inflammation throughout your body. Mask Vegetables In Food The addition of vegetable flour is especially good for moms who are looking to add nutritious vegetables to their children's diets. It can be difficult getting kids to consume heaping servings of vegetables, vegetable flour is delicious and nutritious and when used in recipes, your kids dont even realize they are eating their veggies. Not only will your recipes be delicious, but they allow you to add healthy vitamins and minerals to your family’s meals. Types Of Vegetable Flours Below are a few of the vegetable flour alternatives that you can use as instead of traditional flour in your daily cooking. By using these flours, you will be able to incorporate more nutritional properties into your diet and avoid adding unhealthy saturated fats through the use of white flour. Kale Flour SHOP NOW Kale is one of the most popular superfoods on the market today. It's popular for good reason as it happens to be one of the most powerful superfoods you will find anywhere. It offers a range of essential vitamins and minerals with many health benefits. This type of flour can be used for a range of recipes from making pancakes to breading chicken. Carrot Flour SHOP NOW Carrots are another vegetable that offers great health benefits. They contain vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin K, fiber, beta carotene, potassium, and antioxidants. This flour can be used in everything from making sauces to baking. Yam Flour SHOP NOW Yams are another healthy vegetable that you can incorporate more of in your diet by using yam flour. Yam flour is a great option for anyone that is looking for a nutritious flour that is gluten-free and vegan. Beet Flour SHOP NOW Beet flour is a great option to incorporate into your cooking and it can be used in a variety of ways. It also acts as a natural sweetener and adds color to your recipes. Beet flower is incredibly nutritious and contains essential vitamins and minerals including but not limited to folate, magnesium, potassium. Beet flour is particularly good for those that are looking for nutrient properties to add natural energy. Broccoli Flour SHOP NOW By using broccoli flour, you will be able to get more healthy vegetables in your diet without losing the nutritional value. Just a few tablespoons of broccoli flour can deliver the kind of nutritional properties that you would get from a couple of servings of broccoli. RELATED: Top 15 Gluten-Free Flours to Bake Delicious and Healthy Cakes 9 Best Cake Flour for Baking Tasty and Healthy Desserts 7 Best Keto Flours to Reduce Your Carb Intake Non GMO Flour: What Is It, Where to Buy It, and Top 10 Healthy Choices 10 Best Paleo Flours for Baking and Cooking How to Make Cookies from Scratch with the Best Gluten-Free Cookie Mix? Cassava Flour 101: Essential Facts, Benefits, and Uses [+Recipes] What is the Difference Between All-Purpose Flour and Cake Flour Vegetable Flour Recipe Ideas The recipes that you can use vegetable flours for are endless. After all, if you can use flour in your recipe, you can substitute it with a healthy flour alternative, vegetable flour. To give you a few ideas to try, we have included a few recipes below. Yam Flour Waffles Ingredients: 3/4 cup sweet potato vegetable flour 1/2 cup of almond flour 4 tablespoons of honey 2 full eggs 1.5 cups of almond milk 2 tablespoons of butter Instructions: Preheat waffle iron Mix eggs, almond milk, honey, and butter together in a bowl until smooth Fold dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until fully incorporated Pour batter onto greased waffle iron (refined coconut oil for a healthier option) Let waffles cook until golden brown Serve hot for best flavor with honey or maple syrup Red Velvet Pancakes Ingredients: 1.5 tablespoons of beet flour 5 tablespoons of almond flour 2 full eggs 1.5 teaspoons of baking soda 1 tablespoon of flaxseed meal 1 tablespoon of raw honey 2 teaspoons of vanilla Instructions: Preheat griddle to 350 degrees Mix eggs, honey, and vanilla together in a bowl until smooth Fold dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until fully incorporated Pour batter onto greased griddle (refined coconut oil for a healthier option) Let pancakes cook until golden brown Serve hot for best flavor with honey or maple syrup. An alternative would be to add fresh whipped cream. Spinach Pizza Crust Ingredients: 1 cup spinach flour 1 full egg 5 cups of shredded mozzarella cheese 1 teaspoon basil 5 teaspoon oregano Instructions: Preheat oven to 425 degrees Blend spinach flour, mozzarella cheese, and seasoning in a food processor Add the egg to the processor and blend until smooth Spread the mixture on parchment paper and bake for 12 - 15 minutes until edges are golden brown Once the crust is cooked, add your favorite toppings and broil until the cheese is melted In Conclusion The bottom line is, vegetable flours are a great alternative flour, with additional health benefits, to traditional flours. Not to mention, vegetable flours provide a gluten-free and vegan solution for cooking and baking. If you are looking for a delicious, versatile, and healthy option for flour, Hearthy Foods can help! Check out our store see all of the vegetable flours, fruit flours, nut flours that we carry. Happy cooking!
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MAY 15, 2020
HEALTHYISH Kabocha Squash Flour Is My New Go-To for Gluten-Free Baking
It blends with other flours like a dream without making things too craggy, stodgy, or crumbly. BY KYLE BEECHEY It feels like everyone I know is squashing anxieties with focaccia and killing time by baking yet another loaf of banana bread. I’ve been inspired to try a whole slew of gluten-free flours, making blends with buckwheat and fonio. But the flour I keep mixing in is one I never expected: kabocha squash flour. Mine comes from Hearthy Foods, a California-based brand with an arsenal of alternative flours. As soon as the jar arrived, I made a quick bread from an equal blend of kabocha, rice, and rye flour (so I didn't have to use as much of my precious, and pricey, squash flour). I put my experiment in the oven and crossed my fingers. Not only did it rise and bind like a dream, but it wasn’t too craggy, stodgy, or crumbly. It was a hit, and no one I fed it to could guess the mystery ingredient. Who knew that flour made from nothing but dehydrated, milled squash could be such a baking workhorse? Its nutty flavor can lean savory or sweet, and it’s mild enough to let other ingredients shine through. Surprisingly, unlike other gluten-free flours, kabocha didn’t make things too cakey, crumbly, or dense. I’ve been baking two or three times a week since “staying home” became the cool and socially responsible thing to do, putting kabocha flour in brownies, pancakes, and cinnamon rolls. All were moister than usual, with that earthy craveable sweetness. Since it’s gluten-free, you will need to adjust your quantities when subbing in recipes that call for AP. Start by substituting no more than 50 percent AP flour, then check out this guide to make your own gluten-free flour blends. With practice and a lot of internet research, I’ve found that a good overall philosophy when baking without gluten is to add two or three tablespoons of starch (tapioca or corn) and two teaspoons of extra baking powder for every cup of gluten free-flour to avoid crumbly or overly dense results. Kabocha flour has my heart, but now I’m inspired to play around with fonio, rice, cassava, and honeybean too. It might take some research, but I’ve got time.
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MAY 02, 2020
The Dangers of Wheat: My Mom's struggle and the Flour Revolution.
I created Hearthy Foods because of my mom. She suffered for years from diabetes and high blood pressure. I remember the day doctor told her that she had to eliminate the rice, naan, and roti's from her diet. For an Indian mother, these were her life staples. I felt so helpless looking at my mom's face and seeing the sadness in her eyes. I wanted to make a flour that my mother would be able to use to make her favorite bread, rotis, and food. By eliminating wheat, I started on a journey to understanding the problems of wheat. I read Wheat Belly by Willam Davis in which he exposes the harmful effects of wheat. A wheat diet is the leading cause of obesity and other health problems. The book by Dr. David Perlmutter called Grain Brain: The Surprising Truth about Wheat, Carbs, and Sugar--Your Brain's Silent Killers exposes even so-called healthy carbs like whole grains can cause dementia, ADHD, epilepsy, anxiety, chronic headaches, and depression. But my mother told me she been eating wheat as a kid like her parents and grandparents with no side effects. I realized the mass-produced wheat of today is not the same as the local wheat grown by artisans in my mom's village. I started to make plant-based flours that my mother would be able to use to make her favorite bread, rotis, and food, without sacrificing taste. As our diets changed and health improved, I wanted to share those original flours to the world. Although my mother is no longer with us, it was her struggle that inspired me to start the first plant-based flour company. I hope you enjoy our flours as much as we do. NOTE about the picture : a picture of my mom and dad in front of the Taj Mahal in 1978. I had the world's greatest parents a kid can ever have.
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APR 20, 2020
Hearthy Offers Healthy Fare Alternative Flour maker sees gains in market-LA Business Journal By Medina DiMartino
The recent shortage of all-purpose flour has forced some consumers to reach for almond or coconut substitutes as they hone their quarantine cooking skills. For Hearthy Foods’ consumers, though, non-grain options have been a staple for some time. The downtown-based company specializes in fruit and vegetable flour — think apple, banana, kale, squash, hemp, beet, broccoli, spinach or mango — that’s ready for use in baking or for adding to soups, stews or smoothies. Hearthy Foods’ founder and President Riaz Surti is a serial entrepreneur who watched his mother struggle with food intolerance issues, and high blood pressure and cholesterol. She had to stop eating carbohydrates, including her favorite “roti with atta,” an Indian flatbread made with whole wheat flour. “I remember looking at her face and seeing how sad she was and thinking ‘I have to make something that would benefit her,’” Surti said. He turned to fruits and vegetables, perfecting his manufacturing process along the way. “The key is to mill it so it has the same consistency as all-purpose flour,” Surti said. “Not too airy or too light.” Surti gets his supplies from L.A. Wholesale Produce Market, located less than a mile from Hearthy Foods’ 20,000-square-foot plant in L.A.’s Arts District. He slices the produce then dries it in ovens he once used to bake cheesecakes and pies for the Vons and Albertsons Co. Inc. grocery store chains. Surti then mills it into flour and packages it in colorful containers resembling pints of ice cream. “We did that for dramatic effect, as market distinction,” he said, adding that the tubs debuted on “The Final Table,” a cooking show on Netflix that featured chefs preparing foods from various parts of the world. “A TV producer came and bought pounds of pumpkin flour, but we didn’t know it was for that show,” Surti said. Hearthy Foods has 10 employees, including Chief Operating Officer Shahab Malik. The company projects it will end 2020 with about $2 million in revenue. It sells its products mostly online, both through its own eCommerce website and Amazon. Hearthy’s retail footprint includes natural foods stores and the Fresh Thyme Farmers Market grocery chain. It also sells in bulk to Gordon Food Service, a Michigan-based distributor, and to Phoenix-based Sprouts Farmers Market Inc. Rising demand Hearthy Foods says some of its customers have food intolerances or allergies, and others are looking for palate-pleasing, pure, grain-free ingredients or to ward off illness. The company is part of a growing trend, according to NPD Group Inc., a New York-based market researcher that collects receipt data from brick-and-mortar and eCommerce transactions as well as from 12 million consumer surveys. “There’s this feeling that my food or beverages can actually provide me with some kind of health benefit, that it’s not just about taste and sustenance and/or just keeping me full — that there are perhaps some long-term benefits for certain foods, and consumers are starting to gravitate for those foods,” said Darren Seifer, food and beverage industry analyst for NPD. “You hear about ingredients like turmeric that seem to help keep off inflammation ... or manuka honey, which is another way to sweeten the food while providing benefits,” Seifer said. “Cannabis is a big one that we keep hearing about, and the role that’s going to have on the food industry.” He also emphasized that “this is not about consumers becoming vegetarian or vegan as 90% of the people using these products also eat meat and dairy. So, it’s not about a rejection of traditional forms. It’s about adding some of these alternatives to their repertoires.” Nearly one-quarter of adults in the United States report they are on a nutrition plan with the goal of promoting long-term health, according to NPD, but not necessarily weight loss. One in five adults manages a health condition with food and beverage choices. Seifer said they are not skipping the doctor’s office, but many first look at what they eat or drink before turning to medication. An expanding field Along with Hearthy Foods, other firms in the marketplace include Marina del Rey-based Thrive Market Inc., a 650,000-member eCommerce platform that, in exchange for a $60 annual fee, offers natural and organic products at 30% to 50% off retail. Thrive Market sells both third-party goods and its own brands, including nut-based flour. The privately held company, which was founded in 2013 by Kate Mulling, Nicholas Green, Gunnar Lovelace, and Sasha Siddhartha, has raised about $160 million to date and has more than 500 employees. El Segundo-based Beyond Meat Inc. is another key player. Its plant-sourced meats alternatives are sold at Costco Wholesale Corp., Kroger Co., Albertsons, Whole Foods Market Inc., and Target Corp. stores. The company, which employs more than 470 workers and had a market value of about $4.15 billion as of March 30, is aiming for the $500 million revenue milestone in 2020. “The opportunity before us, I think, is unprecedented. The consumer is ready for what we’re doing,” Beyond Meat Chief Executive Ethan Brown told analysts during a recent earnings call. “You’ll see us make a lot of investment this year in our production capacity, in our international growth, in our marketing and, of course, continuing to research and push forward the idea that you can build a piece of meat directly from plants that is indistinguishable from animal protein.” Hermosa Beach-based PowerPlant Ventures is leading the charge on the funding side. The venture capital firm closed a $165 million second fund in August to further its investment in what co-founder Mark Rampolla called “the early innings of a major food revolution,” according to a statement the company issued at the time. PowerPlant has backed Beyond Meat and Thrive Market, along with Berlin-based food powder mix producer Your Superfoods and San Pedro-based organic beverage retailer Wellness Shots Co. Inc., doing business as Vive Organic. The PowerPlant team includes Rampolla, who founded Zico Beverages, a coconut water pioneer that was acquired by the Coca Cola Co. in 2013; Kevin Boylan and T.K. Pillan, co-founders of Veggie Grill Inc.; and Dan Gluck, co-founder of Health Warrior, a superfood brand acquired by PepsiCo Inc. in 2018. Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. in Florida recently toured Hearthy Foods’s facility. “They gave us an offer, but I think we can do a little bit better if we hold on a little bit longer,” Surti said. “We know we are on the right track. All we’ve got to do is continue our eCommerce sales.”
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APR 11, 2020
Using Cacao is the Only Way to make the Best Tasting Brownies
The secret to make a great tasuting and moist brownies is using cacao instead of using melted chocolate. It will be better in texture, taste, moisture and flavor. Here's why? It comes down to melted chocolate has cocoa butter which is solid at room temperature. When you make brownies with cacao and butter you will have brownies that stay soft and moist. Butter is softer while cocoa butter along with other ingredients like sugar, emulsifiers, and stabilizers found in melted chocolate stay harder at room temperature. Cacao flour is just one ingredient which means you can control the taste, flavor and texture. Unsweetened Hearthy Cacao flour also will provide more intensity chocolate taste to your brownies because it's nothing but 100% cacao flour. Melted chocolate will need more flour to provide balance while less flour means less cakines, dryness and hardness. Don't buy expensive overpriced expensive imported cocoa Dutch processed powder. We are selling Hearthy Cacao Flour at bulk prices. Cocao powder varies in quality. Hearthy Cacao Flour is made with the best, we guarantee 100% customer satisfaction.
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JAN 15, 2020
Hearthy flours teams up with Weight Watcher's Community
Hearthy Foods products fits Weight Watcher's recipe like a glove. One of the reasons why Hearthy flours was created was to allow you to eat what you love. Weight Watcher is one of the top rated weight loss program because it allows you to eat what you love, lose weight, and promotes a healthy lifestyle. One of the ways they do that is called freestyle diet. Hearthy Flours is ideal because it falls within those guidelines smart points and zero points. Check out this Two Ingredient Bagel recipe Two-ingredient bagel recipeMakes 44 (Green), 3 (Blue), or 3 (Purple) 1 cup apple flour + 2 tsp baking powder + ¾ tsp salt)1 cup plain fat-free Greek yogurt1 egg white, lightly beatenPreheat oven to 375°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.Apple flour, baking powder, and salt whisked together) to a large mixing bowl. Add the yogurt and use a spatula or wooden spoon to combine thoroughly.Lightly flour a clean surface and empty the dough onto it (it will be sticky, so keep some extra flour nearby). Use well-floured hands to knead the dough for 3 to 5 minutes, until it’s smooth and tacky but no longer sticky. Form into a round, and cut into four pieces.Working with one piece at a time, roll each into a 6- to 7-inch snake, then pinch ends together to form a circle. Place on the baking sheet and repeat with remaining dough. Brush beaten egg white over the tops and bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until golden brown. Cool on a wire rack.From our customer Jess OdlumThank you for your email. I previously purchased the Apple flour through amazon when I was searching for gluten free replacements. It was delicious! When I googled your company, I was thrilled to see all of your flour options and can’t wait to try them all. And I prefer buying directly from companies. Have you heard of the weight watchers 2 ingredient bagel? I don’t do weight watchers (I have too many food sensitivities and restrictions) but I love the simplicity of it. It’s a cup of Greek yogurt and a cup of flour blended. Then four “bagels” are formed and baked. Your Apple flour, with a dash of cinnamon and a little extra yogurt because of the moisture needed, makes it a sweet treat—a yummy wholesome baked good with high fiber! I’m looking forward to trying the mango and pumpkin in this recipe. Thanks for making healthy food that I can eat!Jess Odlum
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