Almond flour
Ground almonds: high in fat and protein, containing no starch at all, and therefore behaving unlike every other flour in this section.
Also called ground almonds (UK) — Usually coarser than what is sold as almond flour, though the distinction is not consistently applied.; almond meal (US)
Almond flour is the odd one out, and treating it as a gluten-free flour like the others is the source of most disappointment with it. It is roughly half fat, carries substantial protein, and contains essentially no starch — so the setting mechanism every other flour here relies on is simply absent.
What that means in practice is that almond flour cannot make bread. There is nothing to gelatinise, so there is nothing to set the crumb; the fat actively shortens whatever structure does form. What it can do is make dense, moist, tender bakes where egg supplies the structure and the fat is wanted — which is why it works in macarons, financiers and rich cakes and fails in a loaf.
It is also not a one-for-one substitute for a starch-based gluten-free blend by weight, because the fat and the absence of starch both change the formulation.
What changes if it is left out
The bake loses fat, richness and moisture, and gains whatever starch replaced it — usually becoming lighter, drier and less tender.
Follows from the compositional difference rather than from a measured comparison.
RecordedFollows from evidence recorded elsewhere on BakeHQ
Related
What it does
Gluten inhibition
Roughly half fat, so it shortens whatever structure forms. It contains no starch at all, which is why it cannot make bread.
Can stand in for
Wheat flour— only where fat and tenderness were wanted, and never in bread
Almond flour contains no starch, so the setting mechanism every other flour here relies on is simply absent. It works where egg supplies the structure and richness is wanted — macarons, financiers, dense cakes — and cannot make bread at all. It is also not interchangeable with a starch blend by weight, because the fat changes the formulation.
Compared in
A subject of the comparison, so it is reachable from the record a reader is more likely to land on first.