How do all these gums and goops work?


(BuckRimfire) #1

I’ve flailed around a bit trying to substitute for wheat flour, but haven’t been paying close attention, so I’m making no progress. Tonight, I tried to substitute for wheat in a “leftovers pancake” by replacing it with oat bran flour and an egg, which was stunningly fragile and unsuccessful.

Maybe adding some psyllium or xanthan or guar gum would help. Or not. Is there a comprehensive guide to the effects of these things, egg, almond flour, coconut flour, etc, in trying to make a dough-like substance or other edible concrete?


#2

This may be of help:


(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #3

There is also a pork-rind batter for pancakes and waffles in the Recipes forum that people seem to like quite a bit.


(Marianne) #4

Xantham gum is disgusting, in my opinion. I haven’t had much luck using it. It just doesn’t seem to dissolve very well, even when I dissolve it in butter and just dust it in a sauce or soup. Latest fail was on Thanksgiving when I tried to make gravy. It was gross and formed a weird mess on the top, which never really incorporated no matter how much I boiled it. Wound up spooning off as much as I could and discarding it.


#5

In 4 yrs I’ve yet to ever find a keto pancake/waffle recipe that didn’t completely suck. Even when you almost match consistency the taste isn’t there. For homemade stuff the best I ever did was Carbquik, but the recieps they give you are terrible, it’s takes a lot of tweaking but it’s possible. The Keto and Co brand ones actually taste really good! You could (probably) pass them off as the real thing to somebody unless they just had real pancakes recently. Lots of supermarkets carry them now as well. Like anything that has seemed to pull off the impossible, they’re a little overpriced, but not crazy either.


#6

I make thin carnivore pancakes even for my high-carber SO, it’s just perfect… But if I needed a thicker stuff, I would add some kind of fiber. I actually don’t like psyllium husk in sweet things (if your pancakes are sweet. mine on carnivore aren’t but some are neutral dessert pancakes and off carnivore I eat them sweet too), it’s surely personal taste but its flavor reminds me of mushroom… But bamboo or oat fiber worked when my pancake was too soft originally. But they were still thin so I don’t know if they would work for an American pancake but probably but it’s possible the taste wouldn’t be good for everyone…?
I never tried xanthan or guar gum. I have konjac flour and I saw it in doughs in little amount but I never used that either, bamboo/oat fiber worked well enough but it’s tasteless so much probably would diminish the flavor. Konjac floor is effective in tiny amounts. But again, I didn’t try it.

I disliked using much coconut flour (too strong water absorption, the texture becomes weird, the stuff too fragile/crumbly) but some people are into it. Even a small amount didn’t work well in my pancakes.

My “flour” in my thin pancake is actually mascarpone. It keeps the pancake tasting like scrambled eggs and it makes it just firm enough (still soft but nice). My family loves eggy pancakes so it works for us. But I told this because it may be good to start with some kind of cream cheese and continue with whatever flour substitute you consider a valid option… It sounds better to me as using only some (not very little) more or less tasteless powder with the eggs. There are flavorful oily seed flours too… I usually have problems with the taste, mixing them may help but tastes differ very much.


#7

I used it when I made Heavenly Fan’s coconut flour French Fries. There was nothing “icky” about the dough I made. I was actually thinking it might be a good dough for baking calzones or empanadas.

But I didn’t really “dissolve” it. I mixed it with the coconut flour before I added the water.


(Marianne) #8

Glad it worked for you. I’ve only tried it to thicken liquids.


(Bob M) #9

I pretty much just use roux now for thickening liquids. Or just let them be thin. Or if there’s a recipe, I’ll follow that.

Made gravy and used 3 Tbsp of flour (+ 3 Tbsp butter) for one cup of gravy, 18 grams carbs, split between 2 people over 2 meals, so about 5 grams carbs per person per meal.