Guide on How to Make Bread with Cassava Flour

A loaf of bread consisting of 100% cassava flour can be baked using simple and affordable equipment and it fetches the same price as wheat bread. The amazing part about this is that Cassava yields four times as much as wheat and hence cassava farmers have potential to earn more income both internally and externally because aside from using cassava tubers for cassava flour production, cassava farmers can also sell their cassava tubers for Garri processing and other products that can be produced from cassava tubers.

Before we go any further, let’s take a minute to backtrack and talk about what cassava is exactly. Also known as yuca, cassava is a tuber in the same family as taro, yams, and potatoes. People will often mistake cassava flour for tapioca flour, but the similarity ends with them both being from the yuca root.

The major difference between the two is that to make tapioca flour, the root is washed, pulped, and then squeezed to extract a starchy liquid. Once all the liquid evaporates, what remains is the tapioca flour. While Cassava flour, on the other hand, is produced from the entire root, peeled, dried, and ground.

Note that Cassava flour is lighter than all-purpose flour (130 grams per cup versus 145 to 150 grams when using the scoop and sweep method), yet it absorbs more liquid (meaning you should scale back the amount when making a substitution). You have to play around a bit to strike the right balance.

Cassava (Manihot esculenta L.Crantz) is one of the most important food crops in the humid tropics, being particularly suited to conditions of low nutrient availability and able to survive drought

Meanwhile, The use of cassava flour in bread making is a convenient alternative for promoting the use of a local crop as well as reducing imports of wheat flour, promoting the production of high quality cassava flour, offering a gluten-free product and developing biofortified and fortified foods.

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Here’s a Quick Summary of How Cassava Flour Works:

1. It’s a very dusty flour, so be gentle: Don’t plop it into the bowl, or you’ll be consumed by a dust cloud.

2. It loves liquid, and drinks it up considerably, at a higher proportion than all-purpose flour. So while packages say it’s a cup for cup substitute, I’ve found that you need to scale back the amount of cassava flour when making a substitution.

3. Cassava flour imparts an earthy, subtly nutty flavor—not surprising since it’s made from a ground-up root vegetable, but something to keep in mind when tasting your finished recipe.

4. Recipes that rely on copious amounts of cassava flour and are thicker/deeper (like loaf cakes), have posed a challenge. They tend to come out over-baked on the outside, while remaining underdone and gummy in the center.

Now coming back to the main topic of the day, below are the steps in making bread using cassava flour.

Materials Needed for Cassava Bread Production

Cassava Flour

Wooden spoon

Mortar and pestle

Hammer mill or a blender

Sieve

Polythene bags

Baking pan e.t.c.

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Steps in Cassava Bread Baking

It is recommended to use mature cassava roots as Mature cassava roots are most suitable for bread making.

Step 1: Chipping and Drying Cassava

• Peel, wash and immerse mature cassava in water

• Add sodium metabisulphite 5% to make the flour whiter (optional)

• Cut the roots into thin chips using a knife chipper and soak in water

• Spread the chips on clean raised surface for 2-3 days to dry under the sun; or in an oven at 55oC for 24 hours.

This ensures that the fl our is white and free from offensive flavors and odors.

Step 2: Milling the Cassava

• Mill the dried cassava chips into flour using a hammer mill or a blender.

• This can also be done through mortar and pestle or a grinding stone.

• Sift the flour using a sieve.

• Store the flour in airtight polythene bags or containers until use.

Grade 1 sifted cassava fl our is now ready for making a wide range of confectionery products.

Ingredients and Quantities Required

Ingredients	Tablespoonfuls	Quantity
Cassava flour	4 (heaped)	80g
Whisked egg white	Large sized	1 egg
Salt ½ (level)	1.5g
Sugar ½ (level)	6g
Margarine*	½ (level)	10g
Yeast (dry)	¼ (level)	1.5g
Water ½ cup	70-90mls

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Making the Cassava Bread

• Mix all the flour, yeast, salt and sugar with margarine using a wooden spoon.

• Whisk the egg white until foamy and add it together with water to the other ingredients in the bowl and mix thoroughly for about 10 – 20 minutes.

• Sufficient amount of water should be added to produce a mixture (batter) which does not drop from a spoon rapidly.

• Pour the batter into greased baking pan (tin) and cover it with a moist cloth

• Keep it warm for about 1 hour until its size/volume doubles during which time it will ferment.

• Place the batter without shaking it, in an oven and bake at 200oC for about 30 minutes (or until done).

• Remove the bread from the pan and store for consumption or sell.

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You can even decide to produce your bread in a large quantity, supply to people within your location and make huge money through the exercise.

Alternatively, you can as well decide to act as a middle man between the bread producer and the end users by going to the bakery to purchase the produced breads and supply them to the customers for consumption or resell.

Whichever way you may decide to approach the market from, it’s all centered towards making money through cassava bread production and sales.

Now Get Started with Making Money through Cassava Bread Production!! Smiles!!!

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