The holiday season is here, and with that comes a lot of questions about how to make recipes to suit our loved ones' dietary needs. We're here to help! A common question we get here is how to bake gluten free without xanthan gum. That's because while xanthan gum is an excellent ingredient for gluten free cooking, a small number of people experience intolerances. Fortunately, we've found you can substitute psyllium fiber powder for xanthan gum using a 2:1 ratio! For example, if your baking recipe calls for 1 tsp xanthan gum, you could replace that with 2 tsp psyllium fiber.We've put together a couple of examples on how it works, and we are here to tell you it works perfectly. Read on and see!
The first recipe we used as an example is our Gluten Free Millet Roll recipe.
Xanthan gum on the left, psyllium fiber on the right.
The original recipe calls for 1 ½ tsp xanthan gum as the binder. We exchanged the xanthan gum with 1 Tbsp psyllium fiber, with no other changes in the recipe. The texture of these fluffy rolls remained incredibly soft, the only difference was a slight change in the crumb. You can see the difference in the image above.
Next up, we used the homemade pie crust from our Gluten Free Chicken Pot Pie recipe.
Psyllium fiber on the left, xanthan gum on the right.
The original recipe calls for ½ tsp xanthan gum as the binder. We exchanged the xanthan gum with 1 tsp psyllium fiber with no other changes in the recipe. The texture of the pie crust was indistinguishable. You can see in the image above they are both flaky and buttery.Keep in mind that this is a general rule of thumb—you may need to do some experimenting as well.Do you have any tips for gluten free baking without xanthan gum? Offer your tips below!
