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No, flour and starch are very different things.
Starch is a molecule consisting of a chain of glucose rings. It is one of the main ways plants store energy. In practice, it is extracted from many different grains and tubers such as potato, wheat, tapioca and corn.
Flour is a food ingredient made from milling a grain very finely, and frequently also ...
10
According to the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN) "Banana and plantain do not contain significant levels of any toxic principles." Raw, unripe plantains can be difficult to digest, especially if eaten in large quantities. Doing so can lead to upset stomach. This may be due to the fact that they contain starches resistant (RS2) to ...
9
I found this, it's Ask.com so even though I'm posting it as an answer, I don't consider it the answer. I'd still love to hear what some of the expert bakers here have to say.
(emphasis mine)
As you begin to bake different types of breads, you will come across some older bread recipes that call for potato water. Potato water is the water that potatoes ...
8
Unlike with stovetop recipes, you need not heat the major part of your milk first and then add the starch slurry, you can mix everything while cold. As with all similar microwave recipes, using a wide bowl (preferably with straight sides) is best suited for the job. Use short microwave intervals at medium power, give the mix a quick stir with a whisk every ...
8
I respect Jolenealaska's creative thought, but nothing truly resembling pastry is going to be translucent or transparent unless it is exceedingly thin. The structure alone will refract light, making the product opaque in the same way snow is opaque even though individual water crystals are fairly transparent, if they don't have air inclusions.
This is ...
8
With great skill, a true artist could do what you describe with Thai/Vietnamese rice paper, the dinner plate sized, extra thin ones, like for Fresh Spring Rolls.
I will never apply for the job, I promise.
8
You're vague about what's available at a reasonable price in your area, but there are plenty of things that are used to make vegetable mash:
Root vegetables. (Turnip, parsnip, yams, sweet potatoes, rutabaga/swede, carrots)
Winter squash. (Pumpkin, butternut squash, acorn squash, etc.)
Cauliflower
None are necessarily a direct replacement, as some are ...
7
We eat raw starch, in small to moderate amounts, almost every day without any obvious side effects.
It's difficult to find good figures, but bananas contain at least 1% starch (if ripe) and, I estimate, as much as 5% assuming only completely yellow bananas are eaten raw.
Fresh garden peas contain around 2% starch given that 40% of the sugars are converted ...
6
According to Food Lab, the chemical that causes browning in homemade potato chips is tyrosinase. That article contains some really nice pictures to help demonstrate the value of soaking. Like this one:
Interestingly, after some experimentation, Kenji discovers a technique of first boiling the raw potato in a vinegar solution, drying, and then frying. ...
6
There is a mid-strong correlation between starchy vegetables and root vegetables, but not a perfect one.
Plants have many types of roots. Some of them are thin and fine, others are large. Their primary purpose is to extract nutrients and water from the soil and pass it up to the rest of the plant, but some plant families have started using their roots (and ...
6
If you want the least obtrusive flavor, the best you can go with is thickened water.
While you can probably prepare sheets with the right hydrocolloid and lots of care and plastic foil, I would suggest choosing a thickener which thickens on cooling, and pouring the warm mixture over the pie. Arrowroot starch is frequently used in this role on fruit pies, I ...
6
First, potato starch is exactly what you don’t want to use.
In a very non-scientific way of describing it, potato starch is what you get when you remove almost all of the potato, leaving you with the pure starch, which shouldn’t taste even remotely like potato. (It’s a pure binder. For many uses, you can swap starches based on different plants, e.g. corn ...
5
They are interchangeable 1:1, with virtually no changes needed. There shouldn't be any difference in the final sauce except that the cornstarch thickened one will be a bit more opaque. If you substitute the other way (use potato starch instead of cornstarch) don't let it hard boil (not for safety reasons, just aesthetics). In what country was the recipe ...
5
When I wish to cook a pudding or sauce in the microwave, I heat most of the liquid ingredients (roughly 3/4th - 4/5th) in the microwave first. I keep a close eye on it and remove it just before it starts boiling (when I can see the liquid rise up the sides). The starches and sugars (and egg, if I use it) I have thoroughly mixed with the rest of the liquid ...
4
It is possible to do at home, but it is very labor intensive and requires equipment that most people don't have at home.
The first major step is to produce tapioca starch (ie tapioca flour). The cassava must be cleaned and peeled, then finely grated or milled to break the cell walls and expose the starch. This mass is then washed in a large amount of ...
4
Yes, it's perfectly natural. Dust being rinsed off the outer surface of the lentils makes the water more viscous and helps to trap air in the form of small bubbles. In a strainer, the dust would be rinsed away, so you don't see the same effect; a spray nozzle especially adds a lot of turbulence, which causes more air to get trapped. You can get similar ...
4
A raw potato is 79% water, 17% carbohydrates (of which 88% is starch) and 2% protein. So your question is essentially: can starch be turned into sugar?
In theory the answer is clearly 'yes': this is what plants do when they break down the starch created as the final product of photosynthesis, and what happens in the human digestive system. Starch ...
4
The way to make potatoes sweet is actually to not cook them right away -- you need to chill them, to give the time for starches to convert to sugars. (it's called "Cold Induced Sweetening"), which is discussed in Serious Eat's take on Austrian Potato Salad)
If you know someone who grows potatoes, they can just leave them in the ground to dig up in the ...
4
What you intended won't work. I have also heard generic statements that cooking in principle breaks down complex carbohydrates to simple ones, but this doesn't mean that all complex carbohydrates will break down, nor that any cooking method will do it. And when we come to your specific example, it is a no: starch doesn't break down into sugars at potato-...
3
Per this page from The Cook's Thesaurus many starches can be used for thickening but some work better than others for certain applications. For the purpose of a fruit sauce arrowroot would probably be your best option.
arrowroot starch = arrowroot powder = arrowroot = arrowroot flour This starch thickener has several advantages over cornstarch. It ...
3
In 1997 I was seeking to make a good biscuit recipe while living in Albuquerque NM. In my research I found an article from 1905 in a local newspaper which stated to use potato-water to extend the shelf-life of baked goods.
I used it in my extra large biscuits, and they lasted 4 days of eating. As I stored them in the cupboard, and they remained soft ...
3
The problem with using the non-ground pearls is that they don't always fully dissolve. Cook's Thesaurus indicates that they can be pulverized or ground in a grinder or by mortar and pestle and used similarly to the starch. However, there are pearls which are instant and those that are not. With instant tapioca you can substitute 1:1, with regular tapioca ...
3
While it wouldn't be a pastry, per se (or at all), using discs of cast sugar might work for what you need. If you poured thin disks of cast sugar into a ring mold the size of the top of your pie, you could probably attach them with marzipan or a starch wash or something after cooking the pie. If they were thin enough, you should be able to cut through them ...
2
I haven't tried either but I found this, which seems helpful:
"there is a big difference between the two..where i come from.(malaysia).we use rice flour to make banana fritters (deep fried in rice flour batter thus giving it a crispy crunchy batter) while glutinous rice flour will give a sticky texture..u cant deep fry the batter but its normally used to ...
2
Using the liquid in which a russet, also known as Idaho potato has been cooked to proof yeast and also incorporating the cooked mashed potato into the dough, is a time honored almost ancient method from a time when milk and sugar may not have been steadily available commodities. This method was very prevalent in Eastern European baking. My mother, sister, ...
2
As noted in "History of Tofu and Tofu Products", alkaline earth metals (such as calcium and magnesium) in solution cause the proteins in soy milk to curdle. As I discovered by searching for "Magnesium in table salt" and "Calcium in table salt", a cup of salt contains about 3 mg of magnesium and 70 mg of calclum. While those concentrations aren't high enough ...
2
If you were to cook meat in just water (possibly after browning it) you could call it a braise. In order to be a stew it probably needs some other ingredients. If you don't like or don't have onions, there's no need to use them. Use whatever vegetables you feel like using. They aren't serving a chemical purpose, such as leavening or thickening or browning; ...
2
When it comes to food 'thickness' (viscosity) is frequently discussed in 'relative terms' but not 'measurable units'. As such I'm not sure your question can be answered in 'absolute' terms.
Turning to Ratio where it discuss "Stocks and Sauces"
A Roux is 3 parts flour to 2 parts fat and the 'thickening ratio' is 10 parts liquid to one part roux.
vs.
A ...
2
Both potato and corn starch would work equally well in the preparations you describe. When substituting flour, the proportions are equal, e.g., one tablespoon flour to replace the one tablespoon of tapioca. With cornstarch, it would be less: i.e, one tablespoon of cornstarch per two of tapioca. Were you to use pearl tapioca, it would be two of soaked pearl ...
2
Imagine you fry it as a whole
If you want potato starch. Think, what it is like to fry a whole potato because potato starch come from potato. People cook base on recipe and lost interest in how the ingredient is made.
If you want crisp imaging what it like to deep fried rice. So, rice flour will make your food crispy.
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