Mesquite Flour

Mesquite flour is ground from the dried seed pods of honey mesquite, Neltuma glandulosa (formerly classified as Prosopis glandulosa), a thorny tree of the legume family native to the arid parts of the American Southwest and Mexico. Indigenous peoples of the region, including the Cahuilla and the Pueblo peoples of New Mexico, have long ground the pods into a meal used for cakes and, among Pueblo communities, for traditional bread baked in an horno oven, prized because the tree reliably bears fruit even in drought years when other food sources fail. Naturally gluten-free and described as high in protein and low in carbohydrates relative to wheat flour, mesquite flour has more recently been adopted as a specialty gluten-free flour, while the wood itself is separately valued for the smoky flavor it lends to meat cooked over a mesquite fire.