Snack foods from legume-base flours

A method of preparing a puffed or expanded chip-like, relatively-protein-rich snack food product from legume-base flours which form sticky doughs or pastes at solids contents of about 45-70% wt., which comprises

• (a) providing a finely-ground non-oilseed legume-base flour containing at least about 50% wt. of said non-oilseed legume and at least about 30% wt. starch to yield a puffed product on fat-frying and sufficient protein to yield at least 12% wt. protein in the final product,
• (b) slurrying this flour with sufficient aqueous liquid to form a non-sticky fluid slurry of solids content below about 45% wt.,
• (c) feeding this non-sticky fluid slurry to a heated drum dryer and rotating the drum dryer through a plurality of revolutions to pick up successive layers of slurry and build up a multilaminar sheet of thickness of at least about 0.3 mm, the dryer surface being maintained at a temperature which will dry the sheet and gel the starch therein,
• (d) removing the multilaminar dry sheet from the drum dryer surface, reducing the sheet to smaller size pieces, and
• (e) fat frying these pieces at a temperature above about 170.degree. C. sufficient to yield a puffed or expanded chip-like snack food product of light easily-chewed texture and finely bubbled structure.