I notice a lot of recipes call for potato starch, which of course, I don't have. I'm very limited in what is available to me locally, and my limited resources prevent me from doing much buying online. My mom, bless her, sent me a couple of boxes filled with flours she had found in Akron, rice flour, soy flour, buckwheat flour, corn starch (of course, that I can get locally), corn meal and corn flour, arrowroot powder, and xanthan gum. From what I've been reading, I think I could substitue the arrowroot or the corn starch for the potato starch. (Correct me if I'm wrong, please! )
But my real question is, can I substitute instant mashed potatoes in any way for the potato starch? And I've also noticed references to potato flour. What is that? Can the instant mashed potatoes substitute for that?
Sorry for what I'm sure is a really dumb question, but you never know until you ask, right?

Nope - that's not a dumb question. It's quite a good question!

Potato starch and potato flour are 2 different ingredients. It doesn't help matters when they label a product "Potato Starch Flour" Which is it...starch or flour?? It's really starch. They are using flour in a generic sense.

Flour is the result of grinding up a food item (potato, corn, wheat , etc)

Starch is what is extracted from a food item. It's also much finer in it's consistancy. Used a lot for thicken sauces. It's much lighter than flour.

Potato starch and potato flour are not really interchangable.

I don't think I'd use instant mashed taters for potato starch - I suspect it's much too heavy depending on the finished product. Although I'd have to look at what goes into instant taters to know - we rarely use them.

Tapioca Starch and Tapioca Flour are the same things.

Potato Flour: http://www.ener-g.com/store/detail.a...&id=109&cat=10
Potato Starch: http://www.ener-g.com/store/detail.a...&id=111&cat=10

This is kind of cool - lots of info on differnet starches:
http://www.foodsubs.com/ThickenStarch.html

Some basic guidelines on what to use when (look towards the bottom of the page): http://www.csaceliacs.org/recipes.php

Hi Lois,

Al is right. Potato starch and potato flour are two very different things. I've run across sites that say they are the same and interchangeable - apparently those people have never tried baking with them.

I've been substituting a small amount of potato flour in place of the same amount of potato starch in some recipes. The buns I've made doing that have come out moister, more tender, and not crumbly. Substitute too much and the end product will be very dense, very heavy, very moist, and may not bake completely. Yup, that loaf got tossed. Baked it 2 hours and it still wasn't done!

I have heard of some people who have used instant mashed potato flakes in place of potato flour - not potato starch, but I haven't tried it. If you do, make sure to check the ingredients to make sure it's pretty much just potato.

You can sub corn starch in place of potato starch. I had to do that when making buns one day, and they came out just fine. I believe you can sub arrowroot as well, and others I think, but I haven't tried any of them either.

Good luck!

Thanks, guys! Glad I asked! I'm currently working on a bread where i subbed arrowroot for the potato starch. Hope it works out, bread is one of the things I really miss. Which is weird, because I never used to eat that much bread.
Thanks, Al, for the link to the Cook's Thesaurus. Very interesting and informative!
I'm trying to figure out how to use the tapioca my Mom sent me. It's not ground, it's in pearls and granulated. I've used the granulated by basically soaking it overnight in whatever liquid I'm going to be using in the recipe and it mostly dissolves into starch by morning. I'm not sure if the pearls will work the same way. I have no way to grind it into a flour, and have been afraid to put it into a recipe as is. Is there a better way?

Do you have a coffee grinder? I think you can use one to grind tapioca pearls or even the granulated stuff into tapioca flour. It might not come out quite as fine as buying the actual flour tho. I haven't tried it with tapioca, but I do use a coffee grinder to grind flax seed and almonds into meal. It works great.

As for bread, I just posted about an awesome bread recipe I found. Here's the link to my post:

http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/sh...6447#post56447

I want to try this using buckwheat in place of the sorghum flour, but I haven't worked with either flour before.

I wanted to reinforce, also, that it is an excellent question! Never seen a dumb one... but this one is a high calibur question because starches are confusing.

Arrowroot, IMO (in my opinion), is one of the best starches available. It is interchangeable with corn starch, tapioca, potato starch, etc. etc. (any of those fine powders that are used for thickening things).

Arrowroot, from my reading, was historically used for allergic treatment and to heal the body/gut. It is still used in pharmaceuticals today.

It doesn't require a large amount of energy to do what you want. As a matter of fact, you don't want to 'boil' it or it will turn into 'snot' (sorry ).

It can help make a crispy rice waffle recipe, softer and more pliable... and as you practise with it, it becomes easier and easier to use.

It's all I use for 'starch'... though I don't really use that much.

Good luck with your bread! There've been a couple of really great recipes posted this last week. I look forward to trying them myself!

It sounds like you're really getting the hang of things rather quickly!

I just re-read your original post and was thinking that no one answered this question.

I would think that you could sub the instant m.p.s but it would be an expensive change. Also, you'd have to be very careful that the company wasn't 'cutting' them with other powders that or react to... or worse... gluten! Packaged foods are really such a risky endeavour.

Myst, I used the Artisan Bread recipe Judy posted. Mine turned out so heavy I could have used it for a door-stop. I've still not got the hang of this gluten free baking. I don't know what I did wrong, unless maybe my yeast wasn't that good. It had a good flavor, though. I'm going to try the recipezaar bread next. Hopefully I'll do better with it. I really do want a nice slice of bread!
Claire, I posted my results with the cookies on the thread that gave me the original recipe, http://neurotalk.psychcentral.com/showthread.php?t=3713, the breads and biscuits one. I'm going to work on the recipe a little more, and see if I can get even better results.
Kim, thanks for the advice about the instant mashed potatoes. Right now, they are the closest I can get to potato flour. I found a health food store about 30 minutes away that may carry flours, but haven't had a chance to get there yet. Thought I could go today, but other things intervened.
Hugs,

Hi Lois,

I have meant to write and welcome you. I was also dx with MG but really believe most is related to Celiac. I noticed your mother lives in Akron. I grew up in the area and live about 20 minutes south so I am thinking your Mom bought her grains at Mustard Seed. Have you tried Mr. Ritt's flour? It is premixed and made with Rice Flour, Potato Starch, Tapioca Starch and Xanthan Gum.

I made Christmas cookies with Mr. Ritt's and subbed 1 for 1. You could hardly tell the difference from regular cookies. I am not sure if Mustard Seed has it but Raisin Rack in North Canton carries this and it is only about a half an hour away from Akron. I have not tried making bread mainly because I am sticking to the basic fruit, vege, meats, rice pasta and crackers.

You are welcome to PM or email me.

Linda

Lois, what did you use for the potato part of the "2 cups GF Flour Mix (I used the 6/2/1 rice (1/2 brown,1/2 white)/potato/tapioca)"? Did you use the instant mashed potato flakes? If you did, that's probably why the bread was so heavy. When you see something like 6/2/1 (rice/potato/tapioca) it means potato starch. If you subbed another starch in, then...I don't know. Sorry.

I know the first GF bread I tried to make, I didn't know the difference between potato starch and potato flour, so I used potato flour. That's the loaf that baked for 2 hours and still seemed moist/doughy in the middle. It had good flavor, but it was VERY heavy and VERY dense. Most of it got tossed because I didn't think it was done. LOL

As for the recipezaar bread, my mom used buckwheat in place of the sorghum. She said it turned out really good. If you don't have potato starch, I would use arrowroot or cornstarch. Good luck. It really is a good recipe.

Edited to add: I'm sorry, I saw your post about using arrowroot to sub for potato starch in another thread. I thought I'd seen something about that, but couldn't remember where. Then I don't know why it turned out so heavy.