Why not use cornstarch instead of flour for pastries?

Why not use cornstarch instead of flour for pastries? - Calm senior woman and teenage girl in casual clothes looking at each other and talking while eating cookies and cooking pastry in contemporary kitchen at home

If when baking cakes, and especially pastries, you want less gluten formation, why not use something that has even less gluten than cake flour? What would happen if I tried to make a cake or pastry with cornstarch instead of flour?

bakingcakeflourpastrycornstarch


Best Answer

You still need some gluten, otherwise the cake will crumble. Any recipe that is gluten free has to use a number of different additives to mimic the structure provided by the gluten. If you just replaced the flour with cornstarch, your cake or pastry would not be able to rise (it would lack the internal structure to "inflate") and likely crumble as soon as you tried to move it.



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Can you use cornstarch instead of flour for baking?



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