16 Must-Try Tapioca Flour Recipes for Gluten-Free Cooking (2024)

FAQs

What does tapioca flour do in gluten-free baking? ›

Adding just the right amount of tapioca flour to your baked treats will create a light, airy, crispy and chewy texture. Perfect for adding to bread, cookies, brownies and pie crusts, tapioca flour is a great way to ensure that your ingredients bind together without using gluten!

The bottom line. Tapioca is high in carbs and calories, so it is not a traditionally healthful food. However, it can help a person meet the recommended daily allowance of several important nutrients. It can also be a tasty, nutritious food choice for people who need to gain weight.

Tapioca flour is one of the most popular flours in the world. It is highly prized as a South America and Caribbean baking staple for quick cheese bread. In addition, it can be used to thicken pie fillings, gravies, soups, and sauces. It's not quite as expected in the United States, but it is gaining popularity quickly.

Tapioca flour is an incredibly useful starchy flour to have in your toolkit. It can be used as a thickener for sauces, pie fillings and gravies. It's also an essential flour in gluten-free baking and gives an excellent crust and golden brown hue to your bakes.

It's easy on your gut.

Tapioca starch is gluten-free, so it's a good choice if you have celiac disease. It's also easy to digest because it's low in FODMAPs (fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols), a type of carbohydrate that's hard for your gut to process.

Chickpea flour is also effective in recipes that call for frying and thickening. Other good keto-friendly alternatives to tapioca flour include hazelnut flour, psyllium husk, coconut flour, and flaxseed meal.

Side effects might include stomach pain, bloating, gas, and vomiting. Pregnancy and breast-feeding: Tapioca is commonly consumed in foods. There isn't enough reliable information to know if tapioca is safe to use in larger amounts as medicine when pregnant or breast-feeding.

Due to its lack of protein and nutrients, tapioca is nutritionally inferior to most grains and flours ( 1 ). In fact, tapioca can be considered a source of “empty” calories, since it provides energy but almost no essential nutrients.

Tapioca helps keep the heart healthy by lowering cholesterol and preventing heart disease and stroke, among other things. Because it has less salt, it is especially good for people with high blood pressure.

Gluten-free products - almost all -- contain some sort of starch -- rice flour, potato starch, corn starch or corn flour, tapioca flour - these all spike blood glucose very high. Blended fruits - like in those smoothies we drink. Be careful not to add too many high-glycemic fruits to your morning smoothie.

Can I substitute tapioca flour for all-purpose flour? ›

If you're in a pinch, you can swap all-purpose flour evenly for tapioca flour in most recipes, but keep in mind that all-purpose flour contains gluten. The swap may affect the texture of baked goods slightly—they'll have a little less chew and be slightly more dense.

Tapioca flour often provides a glossy final product, whereas cornstarch results in more of a matte finish. In most recipes, these two starches can be used interchangeably. Yet, you'll want to be careful of the differences listed and only swap in cornstarch if tapioca flour is not readily available to you.

Tapioca starch has a different effect when used as a coating for fried foods. Instead of becoming slippery, it creates an exquisitely crunchy crust that will stay crunchy for a long time. Imagine the same beautiful crunch you hear when eating a potato chip but while biting into a chicken tender.

First, it is important to soak small pearl tapioca before attempting to make pudding with it, or the texture will be off. Some people soak overnight, but we found that 30 minutes or so worked with small tapioca, resulting in a lively textured tapioca with wonderful creamy, custard bridging the beads.

Gluten-free flours often contain fine starches, so they absorb more liquid than conventional flour. To address this, gluten-free recipes usually call for more liquid and produce looser batters. They may also call for a larger quantity of leavening, like baking powder, to help add volume and lighten the texture.

2 teaspoons of baking powder per cup of gluten-free flour is necessary to ensure proper leavening. Baking soda and buttermilk can be used to leaven instead of baking powder, but 1-1/8 teaspoon of cream of tartar should be added for each 1/2 teaspoon baking soda used.

If you're in a pinch, you can swap all-purpose flour evenly for tapioca flour in most recipes, but keep in mind that all-purpose flour contains gluten. The swap may affect the texture of baked goods slightly—they'll have a little less chew and be slightly more dense.

“I have used tapioca flour in place of cornstarch for crisps, pie fillings, and cobblers,” Guas says. “The rough substitution is 2 tablespoons of tapioca flour for 1 tablespoon cornstarch.” Another significant benefit of tapioca is that it freezes well, keeping your baked goods the perfect consistency.