The Bread

• Adding a gluten-free flour to aid gluten development sounds counterintuitive and just plain wrong, but, in fact, bean flour does improve bread's texture. Food science writer Harold McGee notes that in France, where bread is taken very seriously indeed, fava and soy flour are among the very few permitted additives. The same enzymes that give the beans their distinctively "beany" flavor act on the bread flour's proteins, adding to the extensibility and resilience of its gluten strands. This, in turn, makes lighter, higher-rising bread. To enjoy the same benefits at home, replace up to a tablespoon of the flour in each cup with your fresh-ground bean flour.

Bread From Bean Flours

• If you're starting with bread flour, you can replace up to 1/4 of the total with bean flour -- just as you would with millet flour, oat flour or any other low- or no-gluten option -- to deepen its flavor or improve its nutritional value. Making breads entirely from bean flours is a different story. A few international flatbreads, such as the French "socca," are made entirely from bean or chickpea flour, but sandwich-style loaves are more challenging. Incorporate your bean flour into a mixture with grain flours, for best results, and use xanthan gum or a similar ingredient to simulate gluten's elasticity. Gluten is wheat flour's protein, and bean flour provides similar nutritional value.