Xanthum Gum

[JanetGroene]

For reasons I've forgotten I have some xanthum gum on hand. My bread gets crumbly. Would the xanthum gum help? How much should I use per 6-cup bread recipe?

[hellosailor]

Used more in gluten-free recipes than in wheat breads but yes, the xantham gum (or carageneen, or gelatin, or guar gum, or a couple of other things) will help make it less crumbly. How much will depend on what else is in the bread. Too much would make it "gummy". For a "large" loaf in a breadmaker, 1.5-2 lb, you might use three level teaspoons. Might start with two and see how you like the result.

Xantham is the most subtle "gummier" when not used to excess, and also the most expensive.

[MarkJ]

Xanthum is one of a group of extremely processed foods. Do you really need the contents of a test tube in your families diet?

[keyspc]

I think i also might have some left over xanax from the Ex

[hellosailor]

Mark-
"Xanthum is one of a group of extremely processed foods."
My limited understanding is that xanthum gum is simply the waste product from a strain of bacteria. Processed? Extremely processed??

[MarkJ]

It is produced by the fermentation of glucose, sucrose, or lactose. After a fermentation period, the polysaccharide is precipitated from a growth medium with isopropyl alcohol, dried, and ground into a fine powder. Later, it is added to a liquid medium to form the gum.[4]

Xanthan gum - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So its a process of our most dreaded (or should be our most dreaded) food: sugar.

If one want to use it as a laxative - and thats not why its used in food processing - it would be much better to use something natural like Psyllium husk, nuts and chuck some seseme seeds in salads etc.

In bread making if the bread crumbles it needs more kneading (to stretch the protein) or more protein in the flour.

If people are gluten intolerant they should be having a look at their sugar intake and reducing carbs in general.

Our obesity problem is crazy and the easiest way to solve it is to eat natural foods... not the processed stuff and anything that includes sugar.

If we eat a healthy main course we can have chocolate for desert!

[tamicatana]

Knead more. As has been said, kneading brings out the glutens which bind the bread.

You can also let the dough proof and rest for longer

[s/v Jedi]

Our Zojirushi breadmaker does all the kneading and rising with results that don't need any additives. I normally proceed with baking the bread on a silicone sheet in the normal oven because we prefer the Artisan bread. While at sea we bake it in the Zojirushi itself.

[hellosailor]

Mark-
"So its a process of our most dreaded (or should be our most dreaded) food: sugar."
No, no, no. It is not a process. And sugar happens to be one of the most efficient and common and necessary "foods" out there. Sugar, like water, is both necessary and toxic depending on how it is encountered.
If you have a problem with sugar being a food, then you can't drink beer, or any fermented alcoholic drinks, since they all rely on the fermentation of sugar. And you can't eat any type of risen bread, since that's relying on the same "process" as xantham gum, the waste product of yeast instead of bacteria, producing CO2 bubbles instead of the xantham gum.
Without sugar "processing", which is our ordinary metabolic process, we'd all be dead. Sugar is never evil, our internal controls over the processing, and our habit of gobbing it in excessively, are the problem.

"In bread making if the bread crumbles it needs more kneading (to stretch the protein) or more protein in the flour."
Uh, no again. There's way more to bread than wheat flour and without wheat flour and the magic gluten proteins, bread crumbles. All of it, from every other grain, crumbles compared to glutenous bread. Now if you want to talk about evil, look into modern wheat before you look at sugar. Apparently the incidence of wheat intolerance, and the more severe intolerance called celiac disease, have skyrocketed in the past 50 years and no one has any idea of why. It isn't measurement error, they've used old blood samples to test reactions and there is something that has changed in the past 50 years causing major problems with wheat intolerance.
The lead theory being looked into on this, is that about 50 years ago the US (and then the world) switched to hybrid wheat stock, which is genetically different from the older wheats, and contains higher amounts of the gluten proteins as well as some proteins not found in the old stocks. We may have replaced wheat with a highly toxic new form of wheat.

"If people are gluten intolerant they should be having a look at their sugar intake and reducing carbs in general."
Except gluten intolerance has nothing at all to do with sugar problems according to all the celiac sources. That's like saying if you react to poison ivy, you should also get a hayfever test. Not related.

"Our obesity problem is crazy and the easiest way to solve it is to eat natural foods... not the processed stuff and anything that includes sugar."
Natural foods does not mean good or wholesome or healthy! By all means, we have a sugar problem and processed foods usually have too damn much of it. But the key there is to avoid the excessive sugar. "Processing" includes some very simple things like removing toxins, and pasteurizing milk. Don't confuse the baby for the bathwater.

Ever try to find cocktail sauce (i.e. for shrimp) that doesn't have corn syrup in it? AFAIK every brand on the market is heavy on sugar. Except, bless their hearts, the folks at Gold's, who mainly make horseradish and happen to make cocktail sauce without adding any sugar. Proving that it can be done. (GOld's doesn't pay me, I'm just passing back the good karma.)

[MarkJ]

LOL

Lets start with the last. Because it may well show you the falicy of the eat what you can buy, instead of the more correct eat what you can make.

Seafood cocktail sauce
Ingredients

• 2 Little Gem lettuces
• 300g cooked, peeled prawns
• lemon juice
• 4 tbsp mayonnaise
• 4 tbsp tomato ketchup
• Worcestershire sauce
• Tabasco sauce

If you get the sauces without sugar or HFCS its a good healty thing to eat. NO CARBS!! And yummy.

So the other things one should be reducing or removing from the diet are breads, pastas, rices, corns and potatoes... and sugar.
Do that and you are left with green vegetables and the low cab veges and lots of meat. None of that do you need to buy in any form of packet... just in the fresh vege section and the fresh meat section. Eat it and you wont be gluten intolerant, or overweight.... because you wont be eating sugar and the foods that convert to sugar

Eat a meal without carbs... say a huge steak and a huge salad and you can have that beer and still lose weight.

One can even have the special home made bread... but only as a special, say once or twice per week.

Brea dis the only thing I really miss... I did love my bread maker!

[alan_za]

Originally Posted by tamicatana

Knead more. As has been said, kneading brings out the glutens which bind the bread.

You can also let the dough proof and rest for longer

Google "5 minute artisan bread" - no kneading required and makes good bread.

[Teknav]

Hi Mark! In principle, I agree with what you've written; it is not for everyone. Some people have medical anomalies, that they cannot just go on the diet you've just described. Your intentions are good and you get from me. Just leave the diet suggestions to nutritionists working in conjunction with physicians.
Mauritz <Pharmacy - Board Certified>

[hellosailor]

Mark, that's got to be the queerest recipe for cocktail sauce I've ever seen.

Mayonaise ?! Oh jeez, tell me you're canadian and put the stuff on fries as well. Ketchup ?! Made with corn syrup ?? Talk about a processed food, ketchup was originally developed as a way to sell spoiled tomato sauce and scraps.

If you're making something from scratch, you'd use oil and lemons and eggs--but not buy it already made up into mayo. Making fresh mayo is simply too easy, and putting anything with eggs into cocktail sauce would just be a good way to kill someone who had egg allergies. Like they say in the house of ill repute, "Son, that thing just don't belong in there."

[MarkJ]

Originally Posted by Teknav

Just leave the diet suggestions to nutritionists working in conjunction with physicians.
Mauritz <Pharmacy - Board Certified>

As my sister is a specialist I learnt a long time ago that its sometimes difficult to write in the same sentence the words "doctor" and "common sense".

Its so bad you'd think the government is subsidising the sugar industry!




HS: only ketchup made in the USA has HFCS! (Due to the line above!)

[zeehag]

pharmacists are not nutritionists.

raw sugar wont killyou.

hfcs might killye. is not part of sugar until refined. corn syrup is not cane sugar and vice versa.