Potato Starch Substitutes for Baking
The simplest potato starch substitutes for baking are cornstarch, tapioca starch and arrowroot, all swapped 1 tablespoon for 1 tablespoon. If you have none of those, use 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour per tablespoon of potato starch and accept a cloudier result.
Which one you reach for depends on what the potato starch was doing. In a fruit filling, tapioca is the closest match. In a gluten-free flour blend, cornstarch is. In a bread that relies on potato starch to stay soft, none of them behave quite the same, and that is the one swap worth thinking about before you make it.
Updated September 2026
Working with an odd amount? Our free baking substitutions finder scales any of these swaps to the exact quantity your recipe calls for.
Potato starch substitutes for baking, swap by swap
Every amount below replaces 1 tablespoon of potato starch.
| Substitute | Amount | Best for | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cornstarch | 1 tbsp | Fillings, cakes, gluten-free blends | Needs to reach a simmer to set fully. Holds heat better than potato starch |
| Tapioca starch | 1 tbsp | Fruit fillings, anything frozen | Very glossy and slightly stretchy. Gets stringy if overheated |
| Arrowroot | 1 tbsp | Delicate fillings, dairy-free glazes | Breaks down with long heat. Turns slimy with dairy |
| Sweet rice flour (mochiko) | 1 tbsp | Thick fillings that get frozen | Opaque rather than clear. Very stable |
| White rice flour | 2 tbsp | Gluten-free blends only | Gritty as a thickener. Not a clear setter |
| All-purpose flour | 2 tbsp | Opaque fillings, crumb toppings | Cloudy, contains gluten, needs 2 to 3 minutes of cooking out |
| Potato flour | Not a swap | Nothing | Different product entirely. See the section below |
Cornstarch is the answer most of the time, and our full cornstarch substitute guide runs the same comparison from the other direction if that is the box you actually have.
What potato starch is doing in your recipe
Potato starch turns up in four separate roles in baking, and the right substitute is different in each one. Work out which role you are in first.
1. Thickening a filling. Potato starch sets fast and clear, and it sets at a lower temperature than cornstarch. That speed is its selling point and its weakness, because it also thins right back out if you let it boil.
2. Structure in a gluten-free flour blend. Here it is bulking out the blend with pure starch, softening the texture and stopping the rice flour from tasting like sand. This is the single most common place home bakers meet it.
3. Keeping a cake or cookie tender. Pure starch dilutes the protein in wheat flour, exactly the way cornstarch does in a homemade cake flour. Less protein means less gluten means a softer crumb.
4. Holding moisture in bread. Potato starch grabs water and hangs on to it during baking and for days afterward, which is why sandwich breads and soft rolls so often list it. This job is the hardest to replace with a straight swap.
Swapping in a fruit filling
Fruit fillings are where potato starch shines and where the swap rules matter most.
Potato starch sets around 150°F, well below the point where cornstarch fully thickens. It also loses its grip if the filling boils hard or simmers for a long time, so recipes that use it usually say to add it off the heat.
Here is what changes with each substitute.
| Substitute | Clarity | Heat tolerance | Freezes well? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Potato starch (the original) | Clear and glossy | Poor. Thins if boiled | Fair |
| Cornstarch | Clear and glossy | Good. Needs a simmer to set | Poor. Weeps after thawing |
| Tapioca starch | Very glossy | Fair | Excellent |
| Arrowroot | Clear and glossy | Poor. Breaks with long heat | Good |
| Sweet rice flour | Opaque | Excellent | Excellent |
| All-purpose flour | Cloudy | Excellent | Fair |
Worked example: a berry pie filling
Your filling calls for 4 cups of berries, 3/4 cup of sugar (150 g, since a cup of granulated sugar is 200 g) and 3 tablespoons of potato starch, added off the heat.
Swapping to cornstarch: use 3 tablespoons, but change the method. Cornstarch needs to reach a full simmer for about a minute to thicken properly, so bring the filling up rather than pulling it off. If you follow the original off-the-heat instruction with cornstarch, you get pink soup.
Swapping to tapioca: use 3 tablespoons, keep the original method, and expect a slightly stretchier, shinier set. This is the swap to make if the pie is going into the freezer.
Swapping to flour: use 6 tablespoons, which is 3/8 of a cup, and cook the filling for a solid 2 to 3 minutes so the raw pasty taste cooks out. The finished filling will be opaque rather than jewel-clear.
Swapping in a gluten-free flour blend
A very common homemade blend runs roughly 60 percent rice flour, 20 percent potato starch and 20 percent tapioca starch by weight.
For a 500 g batch, that is 300 g of rice flour, 100 g of potato starch and 100 g of tapioca starch.
If you are out of potato starch, replace it gram for gram with cornstarch. So 300 g rice flour, 100 g cornstarch, 100 g tapioca. The blend behaves almost identically in cakes and cookies. Bread is where you notice a small difference, because cornstarch does not hold water quite as stubbornly.
A note on measuring. Starches differ in how much a cup weighs, so blends built by volume drift. Cornstarch runs about 128 g per cup according to our ingredient weights chart, while potato starch scoops heavier than that. Weighing removes the problem entirely, and a gluten-free blend is exactly the place where the difference shows up in the finished loaf. Our gluten-free substitutions guide goes further into blend ratios.
Do not replace potato starch with more rice flour. Rice flour is a flour, not a starch. Swapping in more of it pushes the blend toward grittiness and dryness, which is the exact fault the starch was there to prevent.
Swapping in cakes and cookies
Some cake and cookie recipes use a spoonful or two of potato starch simply to soften the crumb. It is doing the same job cornstarch does in homemade cake flour: replacing protein with something that makes no gluten at all.
The swap here is easy. Cornstarch, tablespoon for tablespoon. Both are pure starch with zero protein, and neither adds flavor.
Worked example: turning all-purpose into a softer flour
The standard homemade cake flour trick is to take 1 cup of all-purpose flour, remove 2 tablespoons, and add 2 tablespoons of cornstarch in their place, then sift twice. Potato starch does that job just as well.
Run the numbers. A cup of all-purpose flour is 125 g on our chart. Take out 2 tablespoons, about 15 g, and you have 110 g of flour left. Add 2 tablespoons of starch back and the total lands near 125 g again, but the protein has dropped by roughly 12 percent. That is the whole mechanism, and it works with either starch. The cake flour substitute page covers the sifting step, which matters more than which starch you used.
For cookies, a tablespoon of starch in the dry ingredients gives a softer, more tender bite. Cornstarch, potato starch and tapioca are interchangeable there, and using cornstarch instead of flour explains where that swap stops working.
Swapping in bread
This is the honest weak spot. Potato starch in a sandwich loaf or soft roll is there to hold water, which keeps the crumb soft for days and stops the loaf staling by the second morning.
Cornstarch and tapioca both hold some water, but neither matches it. Your options, in order of how close they land:
- Tapioca starch, 1:1. The closest of the pure starches for moisture retention. The crumb is slightly chewier.
- Cornstarch, 1:1. Works fine in the dough, but the loaf firms up faster on day two.
- Instant potato flakes. These are dried potato, so they bring back the real water-holding effect. Start with 2 tablespoons of flakes per loaf in place of 2 tablespoons of potato starch, and add an extra tablespoon of water for each one, because the flakes drink it.
- A tangzhong or water roux. Cook a small portion of the recipe's flour with five times its weight of water into a paste, cool it, and add it to the dough. This solves the same problem by a completely different route and works with any flour.
Potato starch and potato flour are not the same thing
This trips up more bakers than any other point on this page, and the bags sit next to each other on the shelf.
| Potato starch | Potato flour | |
|---|---|---|
| Made from | The extracted starch only | The whole dried potato |
| Color and feel | Bright white, squeaky, silky | Cream colored, soft, slightly heavy |
| Taste | None | Distinctly potato |
| Water it absorbs | Moderate | Very high |
| Use it for | Thickening, blends, tenderness | Bread softness, in small amounts |
Substituting potato flour for potato starch at a 1:1 ratio does not work. Potato flour absorbs far more liquid and brings a real potato taste. If it is genuinely all you have, use no more than half the amount, add liquid to compensate, and only try it in a bread dough where a potato note fits. Never use it in a fruit filling.
Going the other way is just as wrong. Potato starch in place of potato flour in a bread recipe leaves the dough slack and the loaf drier than intended.
Troubleshooting the swap
| What happened | Why | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Filling stayed runny | Cornstarch never reached a simmer | Bring it to a boil for a full minute next time |
| Filling thinned back out | Potato starch or arrowroot was boiled | Add these off the heat, never before |
| Filling turned cloudy | Flour or rice flour used in a clear filling | Use cornstarch, tapioca or arrowroot |
| Filling went stringy | Tapioca overheated | Take it off as soon as it thickens |
| Gluten-free bake came out gritty | Rice flour used to replace the starch | Replace starch with starch, never with flour |
| Filling weeped after freezing | Cornstarch in a frozen pie | Use tapioca or sweet rice flour for anything frozen |
| Glaze went slimy | Arrowroot cooked with dairy | Use cornstarch in anything milk based |
Frequently asked questions
Can I use cornstarch instead of potato starch?
Yes, at a 1:1 ratio, and it is the best all-round swap. The one change is method. Potato starch sets at a low temperature and thins out if boiled, so recipes add it off the heat. Cornstarch is the opposite and needs to reach a simmer for about a minute to thicken fully, so do not pull the pan off early.
What is the difference between potato starch and potato flour?
Potato starch is the extracted starch alone: bright white, silky and tasteless. Potato flour is the entire dried potato ground up, so it is cream colored, absorbs far more water and tastes clearly of potato. They are not interchangeable in any ratio you would call reliable, and swapping them 1:1 is a common cause of dry, dense bakes.
What can I use instead of potato starch in a gluten-free flour blend?
Cornstarch, replaced gram for gram, is the closest match and behaves the same in cakes and cookies. Tapioca starch also works and gives a slightly chewier result. What you must not do is add more rice flour instead, because a flour and a starch do different jobs and the blend turns gritty.
Is potato starch better than cornstarch for pie filling?
Each has an advantage. Potato starch sets clear at a lower temperature, so it is gentler on delicate fruit and there is less risk of overcooking. Cornstarch is far more tolerant of heat and holds its set through a long bake. For a pie that spends 45 minutes in the oven, cornstarch is the safer choice.
How much flour replaces potato starch?
Use 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour for every 1 tablespoon of potato starch, and cook the mixture for 2 to 3 minutes so the raw flour taste disappears. The result is cloudy rather than glossy, so keep this swap for opaque fillings and crumbles. It also reintroduces gluten, which rules it out for gluten-free baking.
Does potato starch work in a cake to make it softer?
It does, exactly the way cornstarch does. Removing 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour from a cup and replacing them with 2 tablespoons of potato starch lowers the protein by roughly 12 percent, which means less gluten and a more tender crumb. Sift the two together at least twice so the starch is evenly spread.
Can I leave potato starch out entirely?
In a cake or cookie where it is only softening the crumb, yes, and you will get a slightly chewier result. In a filling, no, because nothing else in the recipe is thickening it. In a gluten-free blend, definitely not, since the starch is a structural share of the blend and dropping it changes the flour weight the whole recipe was built on.
