Shipetaukin Multipurpose Fonio Flour - Gluten Free - Non GMO - Made from Fonio African Supergrain - Use for Baking, Thickener, Breads and More (2 Lbs)

We are still new to this flour and learning how to use it in place of glutinous flours. From a digestive point of view it is delightful with no adverse affects.

it is hard purchasing a product when you do not have knowledge of but need it for something special and this did not disappoint

I never tried fonio flour before, so I’m not the best judge of what this is supposed to taste like, but I’m always interested in trying new foods, so here’s my review.The package says this is a “Product of Africa.” That’s really vague. There are a lot of countries in Africa. The description makes a big deal about how this is “Selectively Sourced” whatever that means, and how the company deals ethically with farmers, but not even naming the country this is from looks a bit suspicious.Anyway, I tried this flour in a gluten-free yeast-risen bread recipe I use often. The recipe also includes the usual gluten-substitutes like eggs, tapioca flour, and ground psyllium seed husk. I normally use a mix of gluten-free flours for this recipe, but I used just this fonio flour, (and some tapioca flour) for this batch to get an idea of what this flour is like. I had to add extra water to get the dough to its usual texture.The bread seemed to rise well at the start, but then deflated a bit as it baked, as gluten-free breads often do. Anyway, the end result was delicious, if dense. It had a pleasant, mild flavor and a light color, like bread made from unbleached white flour. It held together well. I’m sharing a photo I took with a macro lens to show the texture. I thought of sharing the recipe, but it still needs some adjustments to attain the fluffy texture people expect from bread, so I’m not bothering.Everyone in my family liked the bread. If this flour were cheaper, I can see experimenting with it until I develop some recipes that work really well with it, but at this price I probably won’t replace it once I run out. It’s worth buying at least once to try something new.

Celiac warning: way at the bottom, this says that this is produced in a facility that processes wheat. Argh. Proceed with caution.This is pricey, but Fonio is also a more nutritionally complete food than most grains we eat in the US, so there are some benefits to the expense. Also, of course, it's naturally gluten free (but see above).This has a bit of a grainier texture than typical white wheat flour, so it would be good to choose what you make with it accordingly. So far, I've just used it to make gravy, and yeah, the graininess came through. It's also less 'fluffy' than white wheat flour in the back, so a bit denser. I think it would be good to keep this in mind when substituting in baking recipes. You probably need a bit less.I am really happy to have discovered Fonio, and like this flour.Because I have some grain allergies, I burrowed into the phylogenetics (evolutionary relationships) of Digitaria exelis a bit to understand how closely related this is to wheat and rice. (Bizarrely, I am allergic to rice, as well as wheat.)Broadly, these are Poaceae, the grass family. Pooideae is the subfamily that contains many of the grains we eat in the US, including wheat, barley, oat, and rye. This is closely related to Bambusoideae, bamboos. Oryzoideae is a neighboring subfamily that contains rice. These are all in the BOP clade of grasses (I'm not 100% sure what 'bop' stands for, but I'm going to take a wild guess that 'we are tired of naming things', and this is Bambusoideae, Oryzoideae, and Pooideae clade.)Digitaria exelis is in the PACMAD clade, and then the Panicoideae subfamily, which includes corn, sugarcane, and sorghum. For my allergies, I can stop there because the things I can't eat are in the BOP clade, and (so far, at least), I can eat corn and sorghum and sugar.For my allergies, this seems to be a safe food. It's nutritionally complex, and easy to use, so it's a keeper for me.

In testing this flour I wanted to give it the very, very best chances of working, so I used it in conjunction with a foolproof allergen-free chocolate cookie recipe that's very forgiving and my standby. I was skeptical a flour like this would work on its own. Gluten-free flours can be purchased separately or in a mixture. I get the single ingredient ones with the intention of mixing them. They all have different properties and don't tend to work well just on their own. Still, it was worth a shot.My misgivings weren't unfounded. The cookie dough itself was so dry and crumbly I could hardly get it to stay together. The resulting cookies were coarse, crumbly, and dense.I do like the flavor, and it's worth trying, so it's hard to know how to rate this star-wise. For my purposes, at least, it's not a success on its own, but then I wouldn't want to use rice flour on its own, either. So I'd use it only as one ingredient in making a custom flour mixture for allergen-free baking. It's possible it might hold together better if you can have eggs and other binding ingredients like that, as well. But compared to what I normally use (which is a flour mixture), this isn't something I'd turn to again. Its properties on its own aren't as good as using the gluten-free flour mixture I already know works well.