Let’s talk about sweet potatoes. How can you not love ‘em!? They’re full of nutrients like vitamin A, potassium, and fiber. They’re super versatile. You can bake them up for a healthier baked potato. You can toast them and top them with goodies like avocado, cottage cheese, or eggs for a delicious sweet potato toast. They’re naturally sweet so they’re perfect to be used in desserts like this Dark Chocolate Strawberry Cake and these Vegan Mint Chocolate Chip Donuts.
But now you can use them to replace some of the less nutritious flours in baked goods with homemade Sweet Potato Flour! You don’t even need any expensive tools or equipment to make it! So let’s get into it!
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How To Make Homemade Sweet Potato Flour
1. Preheat your oven to the lowest temp it’ll go. (Mine is 170 F.)
In order to turn the sweet potatoes into flour we have to dry them out, but without baking them. This can be done in a dehydrator, but if you don’t have one or don’t want to buy one, we can do it in the oven! Just turn your oven on to the lowest possible temp. it’ll go.
2. Wash your sweet potato and slice it into thin slices
You’ll want to slice your sweet potatoes into as thin a slice as you can get it without putting your fingers in danger ;). The thinner the slice the faster the whole process will go. I just used a sharp knife and cautious fingers, but if you want to be real precise you could also use a mandolin. That’d help get every slice uniform (also helpful in this process because then each slice is done drying out at the same time).
3. Crumple sheets of aluminum foil
The trick to using your oven as a dehydrator is making sure that the hot air can get all around the sweet potato slices so it can dry them out. So, by crumpling up a sheet of aluminum foil you’re creating pointy peaks that will hold the slices up and allow the hot air to get to the underside. (P.S. you don’t want to grease the aluminum foil in any way. It’ll just add moisture and we want DRY! ;))
Since you can’t use a baking sheet, transferring the aluminum foil to the oven is a bit tricky. I recommend using multiple sheets of aluminum foil (each about 10 inches long before you crumple them) instead of one giant one. Each sheet should hold about 6 sweet potato slices. You can do as many sheets as you like. Just make sure that you’re not crowding or overlapping the slices on the aluminum foil.
4. Place the sweet potato in the oven and….wait
Turning sweet potatoes into flour isn’t a hard process, but I never said it was going to be a quick one. Once your sweet potato slices are in the oven the process can take anywhere from 5-8 hours, depending on how thin your sweet potato slices are. The thinner the slice, the faster they’ll dry out, though.
Every 2 hours, check on your sweet potatoes and flip them over to ensure both sides are drying out.
I recommend prepping a big batch of the sweet potatoes and popping them in the oven first thing in the morning on a day you plan on lounging around or doing some housework. That way you can keep an eye on them without running into the problem of trying to leave the house while the sweet potatoes are still dehydrating.
You’ll know the slices are done when they are no longer squishy if pressed between two fingers. They should be hard and crispy and curled up around the edges.
5. Blend/grind the sweet potato slices
Once the slices are hard and crispy, we’re almost done! Yayyyyy! The final step is blending/grinding the slices until their in teeny, tiny, fine pieces. This can be done in a food processor, a high speed blender, or, my fave way – in a coffee bean grinder! I’ve found that this gets the best results when trying to “flour-ize” anything, including nuts and seeds! And it worked perfectly to turn these sweet potatoes into a nice, fine flour. Just place the slices in the grinder and whiz away until you get a fine grain. You’ll have to do it in batches, though, because a coffee grinder is small. It’ll take about 3-4 minutes to get it the right consistency. Then, just transfer that batch into the airtight container you want to store it in and keep grinding until you’re all out of slices.
One small – medium sweet potato will make about 1 ½ – 2 cups of flour. The flour will stay fresh an airtight container in the fridge for weeks, too!
That’s it! It’s taken barely any hands on time and you’ve got a fresh batch of homemade sweet potato flour!
Recap:
1. Preheat your oven to the lowest possible temp.
2. Wash your sweet potatoes and slice them as thin as you can get.
3. Place the slices on a crumpled piece of aluminum foil and pop into the oven.
4. Allow the sweet potato to dehydrate for 5-8 hours, flipping the slices every 2 hours.
5. Remove the slices once they’re hard and crispy and no longer squishy to the touch.
6. Blend/grind the slices until they’re a fine texture, similar to a fine almond flour.
7. Use your flours for all sorts of baked goods and store the left over in an airtight container in the fridge!
What are you going to make with your sweet potato flour? Cookies? Cupcakes? Brownies? Muffins? Bread? The possibilities are endless!
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