Otto's Naturals
<strong>Grain-Free Just Got Easy! Otto’s Cassava Flour is unlike anything your kitchen has ever experienced. It is an amazing, grain-free replacement for wheat flour and can be used as a 1:1 substitute in many traditional recipes. </strong> Foods made with Otto’s Naturals Cassava Flour do not have that familiar dry or “alternative flour” taste or texture that often comes with gluten-free flours. In fact, many users comment that baked goods made with Otto’s are indistinguishable from their wheat-based counterparts in taste and texture.
About the Brand
Hi! I'm Sadie. That's my husband John there on the right, and the "real" Otto in the middle. John and I discovered our intolerances and sensitivities to grains shortly after we married in 2001. Not just to gluten, but to all grains. We're not celiac but we do end up bloated, uncomfortable, sometimes rashy, and several sizes bigger when we indulge. No thanks. The way we would deal with our intolerance to grains was try to have fun with it. We tried to make it all about discovering new foods and new ways to eat old favorites. A great way to do that was to make a point of checking out every supermarket we could during our travels.
We discovered so many fun things along the way. One of them was a cassava flour from Africa. It looked like traditional wheat flour, and baked (most of the time) like wheat flour. We were excited! But this flour also had a very sour, musty smell that definitely came out in the flavor of our finished products. We tried to spice things up a LOT to disguise it, but it was still there. The other draw back was that there was this dominant CRUNCH; like sand. It was still the closest thing to wheat that we ever came across though and we told all our gluten-free and grain-free friends about it. But the sour, musty taste and smell and gritty texture were deal breakers for most of the people to whom we gave the flour. And so began a search for cassava flour without those typical negative characteristics. We knew it was possible and we were set on finding it!
Certified Products
Organic Cassava Flour
Grain Free Ultimate Cookie Mix
Grain Free Paleo Brownie Mix
Cassava Flour
Grain Free Baking Powder
Grain Free Classic Brownie Mix
FAQ
Cassava (also known as Yuca) is a root vegetable grown in over 90 countries. Cassava is a staple food for half a billion people across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It is the perfect alternative to wheat flour when dried and ground using our proprietary method. It is totally unique from the traditionally milled cassava flours on the market.
Other flours begin as cassava peeled by hand and fermented in the sun. Fermentation is not a bad thing, but it adds a considerably sour flavor and smell to the flour. Sun drying is impossible to regulate and leads to varying levels of humidity in the flour that can then lead to mold. The smell and taste of sun-dried cassava flour is often described as “sour”, “fermented”, or “musty”. Not so of Otto’s Cassava Flour. It is thoroughly peeled, dried, and ground into wonderfully consistent, delicious flour that you can count on cup after cup.
No. Tapioca is the bleached and extracted starch of the cassava root. Otto’s Cassava Flour is a whole food! It is the whole root; peeled, dried, and ground. Otto’s Cassava Flour and tapioca flour/starch have very different actions in both baking and your digestive system.
Cassava is naturally gluten-free and Gluten-Free Certified by GIG (The Gluten Intolerance Group) to have no cross contaminants. Absolutely no gluten here!
Otto’s Cassava Flour does not work in a 1:1 ratio for yeast-based breads like sandwich bread. But don’t worry! Otto’s Cassava Flour teamed up with some of your favorite food bloggers to develop great recipes for these more finicky breads. Please follow us on Pinterest and Instagram so you never miss a recipe!
Most Cassava Flours use very large, fibrous, mature yuca root. This makes a lot of sense when quantity is of prime concern. The high fiber content is what causes “grittiness.” Otto’s uses young, tender yuca root instead. This produces a significantly smoother flour texture. While every once in a while you may experience a tiny crystal of fiber, it is noticeably less than traditionally milled cassava flours and most people don’t notice it at all.