I bake for people who don’t eat eggs and I was wondering what you all know about xanthan gum. I’m especially interested in how healthy or unhealthy xanthan gum is in baked goods as an egg replacer.
I know that it is a product of fermentation and it is pretty effective in mimicking eggs in baked goods, but beyond that I know very little. Do any of you know anything about xanthan gum?
From Ruth Winter, A Consumer’s Dictionaryof Food Additives, 3rd Edition, 1989
I bake gluten free for my household and xanthan or guar gum is an essential ingredient in GF breads and cakes and biscuits to make sure they don’t crumble.
Guar gum is much, much cheaper so I use that being a skinflint and all – it is just as effective. I’ve seen discussion of guar gum as a concern when there are soy intolerances but xanthan is supposed to be pretty ‘safe’. I’ve never seen any discussion of it as an allergen or as being a problem.
Golden syrup is often used as an egg replacement here in Australia. 1 tbsp of golden syrup for each egg. That’s definitely got no issues with side effects or whatever as it is pure sugar. It’s also hard to get in the US or so I understand.
Search google or here Lots of links for recipes and uses.
Do these people use no eggs of any description?I’ve used eggbeater type substitutes for over 5 yrs.exclusively in everything from omelets to packaged mixes calling for eggs with the same result as whole eggs.
From what I understand Xanthan gum,at least in bread baking, is used in gluten free recipes to give elasticity to the whole grain flour to facilitate rising,which without the gluten,makes for a really dense bread.
Adding eggs shouldn’t appreciably make those recipes more elastic,just more moist,so I don’t see the connection between the two,at least as Xgum=egg in a recipe.
I experimented with gluten-free baking a while back (for a friend; I don’t require the diet myself) - xanthan gum is a reasonably good substitute for the gluten in wheat flour; I found that by blending rice and soya flours, plus tapioca starch and a little xanthan, I could make a dough that was elastic enough to make good breads; it wouldn’t rise quite as well as wheat flours, but it would make fantastic pizza bases and pitta/nan breads; I blind tested the pizza bases on a few of my (non coeliac) workmates and they could not tell which one was GF.
Xanthomonas campestris is a bacterium; Xanthan gum is bacterial slime, yum!
It’s also the major component (well, besides water) of ‘gunk’ - that varicoloured goop that saturday morning kids shows like to tip over unsuspecting victims and it is used in movies to make alien/horror slime and various other unpleasant stuff.
I think in terms of replacing eggs, it finds most use in salad dressings and low-calorie mayonnaise(style stuff), rather than baked goods.
Guar gum, OTOH, comes from a leguminous herb.
Fuck I wish I’d never read this thread. Yet another additive to avoid… bacterial slime…