"polygonum_on_google" wrote in message
...
On Friday, 22 May 2020 13:09:25 UTC+1, Max Demian wrote:
On 22/05/2020 00:05, T i m wrote:
On Thu, 21 May 2020 23:03:18 +0100, Max Demian
wrote:

On 21/05/2020 22:54, T i m wrote:
On Thu, 21 May 2020 13:20:59 +0100, John Rumm
wrote:

snip

Daughter picked us up a 1.5kg bag of white self raising flour and I
had to look up things to do with it. Very little you can make is
good
for you. (We aren't likely to bake cakes when we don't normally buy
them).

Eg, so far it's made some (vegan) pancakes and Yorkshire puddings.

Handy for a bit of thickening in a stew / casserole.

Isn't that 'cornflour'?

Cornflour (aka maize starch) has been available all along.

Quite, so I'm thinking must be sufficiently 'different from regular
'flour' to stop people using it as std flour?

Plus (and my point) is that I thought it was that that you use for
thickening stews, not self raising flour that would be better suited
to other things, especially atm?

Cornflour (aka maize starch, or corn starch in the US) isn't really
flour as in ground down grains. It's the starch extracted from the maize
grains. It doesn't have enough 'body' for baking. It's used for
thickening gravy or making blancmange or custard. (Custard powder is
just flavoured maize starch.)

You can use normal plain (wheat) flour to thicken a stew, but it's
better to mix it with the meat and onion before adding the stock, as it
tends to go lumpy otherwise.

Even potato flour (as in potato starch) was in short supply for a while. I
prefer it for thickening purposes over cornflour.

What do you prefer about it ? Never tried it myself.

Cornflour can be added to mixes for things like shortbread and viennese
whorls - up to about one quarter by weight. Changes the texture a bit -
arguably for the better.