Making amaranth flour at home is straightforward: grind dry amaranth seeds in a high-speed blender, coffee grinder, or grain mill until they reach a fine powder. The whole process takes just a few minutes, though a little prep work before and after milling makes a real difference in the texture and shelf life of your flour.
Start With Clean, Dry Seeds
If you grew your own amaranth or bought it in bulk, the seeds may contain bits of chaff, dust, or broken hull. The easiest way to clean them is to drop the seeds into a bowl of water and let the debris float to the surface, then skim it off. Amaranth seeds are tiny and dense, so they sink while lighter material rises. Drain the water through a fine-mesh strainer.
The key step after washing is drying the seeds thoroughly. Any residual moisture will cause the flour to clump during grinding and spoil faster in storage. Spread the rinsed seeds in a thin layer on a sheet pan lined with a towel and let them air-dry completely, or place them in an oven set to its lowest temperature for 15 to 20 minutes. The seeds should feel completely dry and move freely before you grind them.
Optional: Toast for a Nuttier Flavor
Toasting amaranth before grinding deepens the flavor considerably. Heat a dry skillet over medium heat, add the seeds in a single layer, and stir frequently for 3 to 4 minutes until the grains darken slightly and give off a nutty aroma. Be careful here: amaranth seeds are so small they can burn quickly. Remove them from the hot pan immediately and let them cool before milling. Toasted amaranth flour has a richer, more complex taste that works especially well in pancakes, cookies, and flatbreads.
Three Ways to Grind Amaranth Flour
High-Speed Blender
This is the fastest method. Pour whole amaranth seeds into a high-speed blender and run it on the highest setting for about one minute. The result is a fine, even flour with minimal effort. Standard blenders can work too, but you may need to run them longer and scrape down the sides between pulses.
Coffee Grinder
A blade-style coffee grinder handles small batches well. Add about a quarter cup of seeds at a time and pulse several times, letting the grinder rest between bursts so the motor doesn’t overheat. The texture from a coffee grinder tends to be slightly coarser than what a high-speed blender produces, with some seeds that pop rather than break down fully. For most baking purposes, this works fine. If you want a smoother result, run the flour through a second grind.
Home Grain Mill
Electric grain mills produce the most consistent, finest flour. The catch with amaranth is that the seeds are exceptionally small, so they can clog the mechanism if you dump them in all at once. Feed the seeds into the hopper very slowly, pouring a thin stream while the mill runs so the motor doesn’t bog down. Some mills sell a small grains attachment that regulates the feed rate automatically, which takes the guesswork out of the process.
Sifting for a Finer Texture
No matter which method you use, sifting the flour after grinding improves its consistency. Commercial amaranth flour is typically milled until it passes through a 50- or 60-mesh sieve, which produces a very fine, powdery result. You probably don’t have industrial screens at home, but a standard fine-mesh kitchen sieve does a solid job. Sift the flour, then regrind whatever stays behind in the sieve. Repeat once or twice and you’ll end up with flour that behaves much more like store-bought.
How to Store Homemade Amaranth Flour
Freshly ground flour goes rancid faster than whole seeds because grinding exposes the natural oils to air. Amaranth flour stored in an airtight container in your pantry stays fresh for about two months. If you won’t use it that quickly, freeze it: tightly sealed amaranth flour keeps its quality in the freezer for up to four months and can last even longer, though the flavor is best within that window.
A practical approach is to grind only what you need for the next few weeks and freeze the rest of your whole seeds, which stay good for up to a year in cool, dry conditions. If your flour develops a bitter taste or off smell, that’s oxidation at work, and it’s time to discard it.
Using Amaranth Flour in Recipes
Amaranth flour is naturally gluten-free, which means it won’t create the stretchy, elastic structure that wheat flour provides. In yeast breads, this is a real limitation. Research on gluten-free bread formulations found that adding around 15% amaranth flour to a recipe improved the bread’s rise and softness, but going higher (25% or more) made the crumb denser and harder. For the best results in bread, amaranth works as a supporting flour blended with starches or other gluten-free flours, not as the sole ingredient.
Where amaranth flour really shines is in recipes that don’t depend on gluten. Pancakes, tortillas, flatbreads, cookies, and muffins all benefit from its slightly earthy, malty flavor and its high protein content. A common starting point is to swap amaranth for 25 to 30% of the total flour in a recipe. For simple flatbreads or tortillas, you can use 100% amaranth flour since those recipes rely on pressing rather than rising.
One interesting finding from baking research: popped amaranth flour (made from seeds that have been heated until they puff, then ground) behaves differently from raw amaranth flour. A blend of about 60 to 70% popped amaranth flour with 30 to 40% raw amaranth flour produced gluten-free loaves with better volume and a more even crumb than either type alone. If you want to experiment, pop a portion of your seeds in a dry, very hot skillet (they’ll puff like tiny popcorn) before grinding.