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I've just peeled 3lbs of hazelnuts by blanching them with baking soda. Here's a GREAT video showing what I did: Hazelnut Peeling (close the ad if you watch the video). My plan is to let them dry for a couple of days on a rack, toast them and then freeze them. That's fine except that I want 25g (approximately 1oz) of hazelnut flour tomorrow for a genoise type cake I'm giving as a gift in about 48 hours. I'm afraid to toast the hazelnuts while they're still damp from blanching (or would that be OK?) Obviously they need to be completely dry before I grind them. I'm not even sure if I should toast them before grinding them into flour. Should I?

It's a little nuts (so to speak), but I only need a handful of dry nuts right away - What about tying them up in some cheesecloth and tossing them in the dryer with a few dry towels? Would that work? Of course that still leaves me with the other question, should I toast them before grinding into flour?

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  • Why would you not simply toast them? They will dry out before they start to toast. – SAJ14SAJ Nov 8 '13 at 1:44
  • If it'll work, great. I'm afraid of some weird effect from steaming since the nuts are still so wet from the blanching. – Jolenealaska♦ Nov 8 '13 at 1:52
  • Salad spin them or towel them well, then go for it. You can always try it with 5 or 6 first if you are worried. – SAJ14SAJ Nov 8 '13 at 1:53
  • That's a good idea. I'll give it a shot, munch on few nuts and report back. So nuts for flour should be toasted? – Jolenealaska♦ Nov 8 '13 at 1:58
  • Worth a shot--go nuts. – Ray Nov 8 '13 at 17:02
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I'm too late for you, but in this situation you could easily dry them a bit in a low-temp oven before turning the heat up to properly toast them.

Toasting will have some impact on the texture of the nuts, but far more importantly it will deepen the flavor. Toast or don't, depending on how much you want the hazelnut flavor to show up in your finished product.

Whenever grinding nuts, be sure they have cooled completely first. Warm nuts release their oils more readily and you risk getting hazelnut butter instead of flour.

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  • That's actually what I ended up doing. I dried them at 200F, shaking every 5 minutes because I was paranoid and then turned up the heat to toast. They turned out GREAT, unfortunately, the cake didn't. I ended up giving a loaf of my standard honey-oat bread. – Jolenealaska♦ Nov 11 '13 at 23:25
  • @Jolenealaska, too bad about the cake. Was it the recipe you mentioned in your question about substituting hazelnuts for almonds? If so, did you remember to omit the salt? – Marti Nov 11 '13 at 23:56
  • @Marti Nope, different recipe. I still haven't made the torte referenced in the last question. That one involves a lot of expensive ingredients, I want to be pretty solid in a few techniques before I try it. This one required hazelnut flour (without salt) and that part turned out great. It was just overly dry around the edges and in a few patches. The flavor is awesome though :) cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/39373/… – Jolenealaska♦ Nov 12 '13 at 0:37
  • @Anthm Oh, and I ground the flour with the nuts frozen. I picked up that hint somewhere else. The grinding of the flour turned out to be the easiest part of the whole operation. – Jolenealaska♦ Nov 12 '13 at 0:43

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