What Is Corn Flour? How to Use Corn Flour in Your Cooking

Corn flour is a fine powder made by grinding dried corn kernels (maize). Corn flour is naturally gluten-free, which means baked goods featuring corn flour won't produce the same rise as those made with wheat flour, but they will be tender and full of corn flavor.

Corn flour is made from finely ground corn kernels. Most corn flour is made from dried yellow dent corn, a variety with a small dent in the top of the kernel. Millers remove the tough outer hull and nutritious germ from whole corn kernels, then use metal rollers to grind the kernels into a fine powder. Stone-ground, whole-grain corn flour is rarer. It contains more nutrients and fiber, but it has a shorter shelf life.

Here are some of the most popular ways to use up a bag of corn flour.

1. 1. Gluten-free baking: As a gluten-free flour, corn flour is a popular choice for wheatless baked goods, from bread to waffles.
2. 2. Breading: In the Southern United States, corn flour has long been used to coat fried foods, such as shrimp. It adds a pleasant corn flavor and crispy crunch—without the grittiness of cornmeal.
3. 3. Chess pie: This classic Southern pie is even better when you swap the cornmeal in the custard for corn flour.
4. 4. Cakes: Try a mixture of all-purpose flour and corn flour in a stone fruit upside-down cake.

The difference between corn flour and masa harina comes down to a process called nixtamalization. Indigenous people in both Central and North America discovered that soaking corn kernels in alkaline water helped remove the tough outer hull; this process, known as nixtamalization, also increases the availability of protein and vitamins in the corn. It's the first step in making masa (corn dough) for corn tortillas, tamales, and more. Although the best masa is fresh, masa harina (masa flour) is a dried version that works well if you don't have access to fresh masa.
Corn flour is simply ground, whole corn kernels. When Europeans first brought corn back home from the Americas, they neglected to import the technique of nixtamalization. This means it is less nutritious, and it doesn’t work for traditional Mexican recipes.

Simply put, corn flour is more finely ground than cornmeal. Any ground corn product with a particle diameter of greater than 0.2 millimeters can be considered cornmeal. Cornmeal is used to make polenta and cornbread. Grits are a type of coarsely ground cornmeal (0.6–0.12 millimeters in diameter) used to make a breakfast porridge popular in the Southern United States.

Corn flour is a type of flour made by grinding corn kernels, whereas cornstarch is a food ingredient made by extracting pure starch from corn. Cornstarch is produced by soaking whole corn kernels then milling the softened germ and endosperm separately. Starch is extracted from the soaking liquid, the germ, and the endosperm using centrifugal force. The starch is then useful as a thickening agent in stews and sauces. As a thickener, cornstarch is usually mixed with liquid to form a slurry before it's added to hot liquid. In the United Kingdom, the term “cornflour” actually refers to cornstarch.

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