How to make high quality cassava flour?

How to make high quality cassava flour? There are nine main steps to make high quality cassava flour.

Step 1: Selecting roots

Harvest or buy healthy, mature, firm, freshly harvested cassava roots. These should have no bruises. The flesh of the roots should be white with no cracking and few fibrous roots.

Cassava

Step 2: Peeling

Peel the roots and remove the stalk, woody tips and any fibrous roots using a sharp knife. Failure to peel properly will result in off color in the final product. Cassava peel (after drying) can be used for animal feed or composting, so do not waste it.

Step 3: Washing

Wash peeled cassava roots with clean water to remove any dirt, including sand, soil, leaves or other impurities.

Step 4: Grating

Use a simple perforated iron sheet or mechanical grater to grate cassava roots into a fine mash.

Cassava grating machine

Step 5: Pressing

Pack the grated cassava mash into a clean bag, such as a jute or sisal sack that will allow extra water to escape.  Press the sack using a screw press or hydraulic jack to remove excess water until the cassava is crumbly.

Step 6: Drying

Spread the pressed cassava mash thinly on a clean black plastic sheet placed on a gentle slope in full sun. Ideally this should be raised off the floor. Dry mash until it is very floury. Cover with netting to keep off flies and birds. Though solar, stove and hot-air dryers are more expensive, the drying process is more reliable and of higher quality.

Step 7: Milling

Mill the dried cassava mash to produce flour. Milling can be done using a hammer mill (village posho mill).

Flash dryer

Step 8: Sifting

Using a simple home-made sieve, sift the milled flour to remove fibrous materials and any lumps. This is important to obtain high quality free flowing flour, free of fibre with a good particle size.

Step 9: Packaging and storing

Pack sifted cassava flour in airtight moisture-proof black plastic bags. Seal the bag using a burning candle (or an electrical polysealer if electricity is available) and label with date of manufacture and expiry date (after six months). Pack bags in a carton to protect them from light. Store the cartons in a well-ventilated, cool, dry place. The packaged high quality cassava flour will keep for about six months.

Now more and more enterprises invest in cassava processing plant to make high quality cassava flour, and sell high quality cassava flour to bakery, brewery factory an so on. We are glad to be your consultant about cassava processing.