Gluten Free Trials: To Xanthan Gum or Not to Xanthan Gum

It’s holiday time which means baking time and I’ve tried two new recipes in as many days. Neither are a raging success, but the good and the bad are both share-worthy, right? First, I made this recipe from the Whole Foods website, substituting the all-purpose flour with Bob’s gluten-free baking flour, and then instead of whole wheat I used Bob’s gluten-free oat flour. The other change I made was to leave out the walnuts because I only had whole ones and I did not feel like spending the time to make them “chopped”. This was where I contemplated xanthan gum, and decided against it, because no matter now safe it it supposed to be, I can’t get over the fact I don’t know exactly what it is, other than it is made in a lab. Alas, the bread came out delicious, but crumbly. So crumbly I can’t even cut it and retain the slice. Maybe a teaspoon of xanthan gum would have done the trick~ I don’t know for sure, but if you are planning on trying this bread gluten-free style, I’d recommend adding a bit in there, unless you like eating your loaf of bread with a fork.

My second experiment was to make chocolate chip almond oatmeal cookies. I got the recipe on the back of Bob’s quick oats where the recipe was actually for coconut almond oatmeal cookies. I have no affiliation with Bob’s Red Mill by the way, they just happen to make gluten-free products that are definitely gluten-free~ no cross-contamination possible. Anyway, I don’t know why but when I had followed the directions on the bag I ended up with overly dry mix. There is no way I could have smashed that stuff together into a cookie shape, so I added an egg and a couple of tablespoons of canned pumpkin, which turned out to be too much in the way of liquid. Sigh. They turned out edible, but not anything truly special, though they did make the house smell awfully good. Incidentally, that recipe does call for xanthan gum so I stuck it in there, though a bit on the lesser side of the teaspoon it suggests.