What is Coconut Flour?

[I'm very sad to say that, in this land of coconut trees, it is very difficult to find coconut flour; this imported package was the only one I could find in the supermarkets.]

Coconut flour is made from the meat of the mature coconut (niyog). Here’s how Dr. Bruce Fife of the Coconut Research Center describes the process of making coconut flour after the coconut meat is grated, as he observed when he visited the Philippines in 2004 on a speaking engagement.
[Printed with full permission from Dr. Fife.]

Healthy Ways Newsletter, Vol. 10, No. 1, E-Mail Edition

Excerpted from the article by Bruce Fife, N.D. in:

http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/hwnl_10-1.htm

[Click on the link above to read the full article.]

[Visited 2 August 2015)

Coconut flour is made from the meat of the mature coconut (niyog). Here’s how Bruce Fife describes the process of making coconut flour after the coconut meat is grated, as he observed when he visited the Philippines in 2004 on a speaking engagement:

“. . . The grated meat is then put in a large dehydrator to evaporate the water. The dried coconut is next placed into a press—often a small, hand operated press. The coconut oil is squeezed out of the dried coconut, then filtered and heat- or vacuum-processed in order to purify the product and reduce the moisture content.

After the oil is pressed out of the meat, what remains is the defatted, dehydrated coconut meal. It has a texture similar to that of corn meal and still contains a high concentration of vitamins, minerals, proteins, carbohydrates, and other nutrients. Sometimes it is used like dried desiccated coconut for making candy and desserts. However, since all of the water and nearly all of the oil has been removed, the meal is fairly tasteless and isn't often used. Dried desiccated or shredded coconut is more flavorful, is easier to find in stores, and is generally preferred in cooking.

Generally, the leftover coconut meal is sold as a high quality animal feed or used as an organic fertilizer to enrich farm soils. Income from these types of sales is minimal, though. Since selling the meal for human consumption offers a potentially higher profit, eventually researchers tried grinding coconut meal into a fine powder to produce a product with the consistency of flour. Thus, coconut flour was created.

The flour was originally developed by researchers at the Philippine Coconut Authority, a division of the Philippine Department of Agriculture, who experimented with it in baking and food preparation. Coconut flour looks, feels, smells, and even tastes very similar to wheat and other grain flours. However, the physical characteristics are dramatically different. Coconut flour does not perform the same as wheat flour in bread making and baking. The properties of coconut flour are so different from wheat flour that it is impossible to use as a wheat flour substitute. The only way the researchers were able to use it with standard recipes was to replace 20 percent or less of the wheat flour with coconut flour. If much more than 20 percent is used in any recipe, the resulting product will be a complete disaster. Coconut flour was a good idea, but it turned out to be impractical as a wheat substitute using standard wheat recipes.”

Note:  In this same article, Dr. Bruce Fife explains how he successfully experimented on cooking with coconut flour, which resulted in two published cookbooks. See the full article: 

http://www.coconutresearchcenter.org/hwnl_10-1.htm