Can buckwheat become tofu? That’s the question behind this week’s Will It Tofu? experiment. Buckwheat is surprisingly nutritious, but unlike soybeans, it’s also quite high in carbohydrates. So I wanted to find out: can we separate enough of that starch away and turn the remaining protein into something resembling tofu?
Making Buckwheat Milk
I started with a pound of buckwheat, soaking it for just two hours before blending it with water. After straining, I was left with two things: buckwheat milk and a whole lot of sticky, doughy pulp.
The milk was fairly mild and creamy with a slightly green, cereal-like flavor. Unlike soymilk, buckwheat milk is full of starch; starch which can interfere with the protein being about to clump together into curds.
So before trying to coagulate the protein, I needed to deal with the starch.
Can We Get Rid of the Starch?
First, I tried the most simple method to separate the starch from the milk: undisturbed rest for 40 minutes. While that did the trick for fava beans, red lentils and more, it did not work for buckwheat milk. The layers that did form mixed together easily when disturbed. I had to move on to cooking.
But rather than simply cooking the milk and letting the starch gelatinize, I used amylase, an enzyme that breaks starches down into sugars. I slowly heated the buckwheat milk into the temperature range recommended for the enzyme and let it work.
After cooking, the milk tasted noticeably sweeter and, importantly, it didn’t turn into the thick starchy gel I was worried about.
Then I turned up the heat.
And that’s when the buckwheat started doing something very interesting on its own…
What About the Pulp?
Of course, the experiment doesn’t end with the milk. The leftover buckwheat pulp was too interesting to throw away.
I used some of it to experiment with buckwheat noodles, mixing it with regular flour to see if I could get enough gluten development for hand-pulled noodles.
The dough didn’t quite cooperate with that plan. But after changing tactics, I ended up with some surprisingly delicious chewy noodles.
The rest of the pulp went into another experiment that took considerably longer than expected. Because apparently one buckwheat experiment wasn’t enough.
So… Will Buckwheat Tofu?
You’ll have to watch the video to see how the final tofu experiment turns out!
What should I attempt to tofuify next? Let me know in the comments!
