Alternative Flour Brownies Test #4

This is the fourth, and for the foreseeable future, the last alternative flour testing I'm doing here on The Chocolate Cult. This is a organic oat flour from Relative Foods, a division of Total Food Package in Michigan. This is a 100% dehulled whole grain oats that claims to be gluten-free and organic. Dehulled means that the seed coat has been removed which is a bit confusing since this also has a good deal of fiber in it and I'd expect the fiber to be primarily in the hull.  We'll get to the nutritional information soon. I received a three pound bag of this flour from Relative Foods via the Amazon Vine program in exchange for testing and then reviewing it on the mega site; this article is an unexpected bonus. No other form of compensation was received in exchange for sharing my experiences with this product.

Let's talk nutritional facts from the bag first. Unlike with the three previous alternative flours I've tested which use a 1/4 cup as the serving amount, this uses 1/3 cup which means I had to do some math to do a fair comparison. Let me lay it out for you. My normal whole wheat flour has 440 calories per cup while Relative Foods Organic Oat Flour has 360 calories per cup.  It has the same amount of fiber per cup as my regular flour does as well. Without instructions on the bag about how to use this in place of traditional wheat flour, I went with just following the Hershey's recipe we use for all of these alternative sugar and flour testing.

The oat flour seems more clumpy when I measured it out yet it didn't mix with any problems compared to my regular flour. As I hope you can see in the photo the texture is a bit clumped together but also a slightly beige or yellowish color like is common for unbleached flours. Without directions on the bag, I used it as I would with my regular whole wheat flour but the batter seemed more liquidy. I put the brownies into the oven to bake for 30 minutes first, adjusting the time as the toothpick and side tests indicated. In total I baked these for 32 minutes.

The pan of finished brownies looked a bit odd, the center looked bubbly while the edges were firm but the toothpick came out clean. The slices of brownies (cut the same way as with all the other tests) showed that these didn't not rise up as much as previous tests. As you can see in the photo, the top kept that bubbly look even after it cooled enough to cut. The outside inch was crispy but the inside was soft and fudgy, the cocoa flavor wasn't changed by the flour itself in any way. However, given the price difference I can't say that I'd buy that product again though if you can't have wheat flour but can have oat flour, this is a good choice if you can afford it.