As a chemical engineer who has processed cassava into flour for years, I get asked constantly if it can replace wheat flour in the kitchen. The honest answer depends on your body, your recipe, and what you are actually trying to bake.

I produce both flours from the same cassava roots in my small operation, and people still constantly ask me if they are the same product. They are not, and mixing them up ruins more recipes than you would expect.

Both flours are gluten-free, but almost nothing else about them matches. I have milled cassava for years, and coconut flour remains the one alternative that behaves nothing like it in a mixing bowl.

Two bags of cassava flour can sit side by side on a store shelf looking identical, yet one might carry seven times more cyanide than the other, and nothing on the label tells you which is which.

Both flours are gluten-free, but that is where the similarity ends. I have milled cassava into flour for years, and almond flour behaves like a completely different ingredient the moment it hits a mixing bowl.