Chickpea flour (besan) noodles, the experiment (in images)

Given a kid's zeal for noodles, I wanted to try to fit some more nutrition in by using chickpea flour (ground chickpeas, purchased at Mediterranean Food Imports for the locals). Beans have a little higher protein and about the same carb count as flour, although the carbs must be more complex and better nutritionally. BUT, they lack gluten, so the extensibility of a final dough is in question at high levels of bean flour. I took an arbitrary stab at 50:50 besan:unbleached white flour.

I made a dough before work from unbleached white (150 g), besan (150 g), salt (4 g), 2 eggs (100 g), olive oil (ca. 1 T) and mashed it together. I intended on using an electric pasta machine type roller so I pick up the extra kneading there and barely mix the lump. I wrapped it in plastic and let it sit in the fridge for the day.

The lump of dough was broken into 4 pieces and I started sending it through rollers. Yup, much less gluten, lots of tearing, not much stretch. But I persisted and got to squish the dough down to a "4" setting, much thinner and it fell apart going through the rollers. Above is depicted the sheets. I let them dry out a bit before cutting into noodles, this keeps the noodles from sticking to each other.

Here's a closer view of the surface of the dough after many passes through the rollers. With all flour, the dough becomes tough and smooth after this operation. In this case, the dough is always more fragile than with only flour (or flour and semolina).

Here's what happens sometimes after a pass through the rollers. This gets folded and rerolled and eventually it comes out acceptable.

After my sheets rested and dried out a little, I trimmed them using only a pizza cutter. I like the wide uneven noodles.

How were they?  They held up to boiling water just fine, they were tougher than I thought.  I boiled them like any other pasta, in salty water and served them with butter, oil and cheese.  They had an interesting flavor, very good I thought.  Tough noodle to get right.  Need a lot of patience and no way would I hand roll these things.  I think I'd make them again.