Yuccity, Yucity, Yuca. James and I recently had a confusing conversation about tapioca starch/flour. As it turned out, the confusion began with spelling and ended with laughter once we figured out the problem.
Many gluten-free recipes include tapioca starch or tapioca flour as an ingredient. The brands I see most often in the store identify tapioca as both starch and flour, i.e., starch/flour, implying that there is no difference between the two. In fact, there is only a slight difference in that tapioca starch is derived from the starch of the yuca plant and tapioca flour is derived from the root.
That wasn’t where the confusion entered our conversation. The confusion was that James thought we were talking about YUCCA, not YUCA. There’s a big difference there. Yucca with two Cs has edible parts, but they all grow above the ground. The Yuca plant with one C is known in many countries as cassava or bitter cassava.
The name tapioca came about as a reference to the method used by the South American Tupi to prepare bitter cassava to make it suitable for eating. There are harmful chemicals in the branches of cassava that, if not properly processed, can cause paralytic disease when consumed over a period of time. Processing yields the third best source of carbohydrates in the world and takes the form of flour, rectangular sticks, pearls (boba), and flakes.
The root of the yucca on the other hand is not used as food. It seems James had the spelling confused, so when I said something about yuca, he googled yucca and neither of us could figure out what the other was talking about. There’s no shame in the confusion. In fact, confusion with cassava by early discoverers of yucca led to the similarity in the names of the two plants.
A small typo could result in an equally amusing conversation or a menu stumper. A local Brazilian restaurant serves adorable little cheese rolls made with yuca/tapioca/cassava flour, BUT they list it on the menu as yucca root flour. English is a second language for the owners, so translation may be the origin of this disconnect.
As a practical matter, you will get a satisfactory result from using either tapioca starch or tapioca flour in a gluten-free recipe so there’s no need for extensive searching for a product that says it’s one or the other. I include small quantities of one or the other in many Cooking2Thrive bread, cracker and cookie recipes.
Whether you call it cassava, manioc, tapioca, or yuca, this carbohydrate starch/flour can serve you well in gluten-free baking. Cassava can also be enjoyed as tapioca pudding, boba tea, and Kerala-style tapioca masala, and you can find recipes for yuca root fries, chips, fritters, and hash – all of which will leave you saying, “Yum!” And that, we all can spell.
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