What is a suitable process to dehydrate almond pulp?
I am making cheese and as a byproduct I have a decent amount of almond pulp. About 2 kilograms. I soaked and skinned the almonds, blended them and strained them with a nut milk bag.
The recipe I'm using says that the pulp can be dehydrated to make almond flour. I am planning on needing almond flour so I thought this might be a good opportunity to save some money. However I don't own a dehydrator, and the recipe is not more specific about the process, so I looked for almond flour recipes. Unsurprisingly most of them seem to use a significantly different process. Most of them seem to involve pulverizing dry almonds some do soak or blanch the almonds to remove the skins, but they dry them before pulverizing.
Is there some process which would be suitable for drying almond pulp? I'd of course like to avoid burning it or growing mold.
1 answer
Without a dehydrator, one typically returns to procedures for drying things out that predate the common availability of specialty tools.
Assuming you have an oven and a baking sheet (rimmed might be best for this) or large shallow casserole dish, spread the almond pulp out as thinly as practical given your available pans/oven space and volume of almond pulp, and bake at a low temperature (170°F or 76.6°C is as low as my oven goes) stirring occasionally if the layers are thick, and breaking up any clumps that form, until dry.
If you have an attic and it's summertime you can often dry things directly in a hot attic, rather than heating up the house more with the oven running. With a wet pulp you don't want to let the temperature get too low, (under 140°F/60°C) or it may spoil. If it gets too hot it will brown and/or burn, but you can probably get away with running it just above boiling (212°F/100°C) for faster results without harm, unless your oven is very bad at holding the set temperature (where it may overshoot to the point of burning, or at least roasting.)
According to this page from the Almond Board of California , roasting starts at 250°F/121°C so there should be a safe range above boiling and below roasting for quicker drying.
Once the flour is substantially dry lower temperatures are less likely to lead to spoilage (so you might, say, start it in the oven and then move it to a hot attic for final drying, presuming the attic is not exposing it to mice...)
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