Guar and Xanthan: Sounds like early 90’s scifi villains
March 1, 2008 – 7:34 amIf you’ve read the ingredients list of a gluten-free product you are most likely to find Guar or Xanthan gum on the list. For someone new to the gluten-free world it may seem kind of scary! I personally do not like the letter X in any of my ingredients and Guar just sounds weird in itself.
But these awkwardly named ingredients do have a very important role in gluten-free baking. In todays post, I will go over how Guar and Xanthan are produced, what they are used for, how you can use them, and where to find them.
Guar Gum, a little bit of knowledge ..
- Is extracted from the Guar bean, which is mostly found in India (But generally grown all over the world)
- Know how Cornstarch can make you walk on water? Guar is about 8 times stronger, needing much less then cornstarch to produce nearly the same effect.
- Apart from food, it is used in many industries including Textile, Mining, Paper and Cosmetics. Yumm!
Ok Bart, enough! I don’t want to know how miners use it. How does it
apply to food?
Actually, the food industry is the largest user of Guar gum. It is generally used as a thickener for sauces. For baking, it essentially fills the gaps lost by using rice, bean, and other substitute flours. How does filling the gaps help? It holds in the air, and helps create that “elastic” feeling most wheat-based doughs would have. Essentially, by keeping the air in, it improves elasticity, texture, keeps it crispy and helps promote a longer shelf life!
So how is Xanthan Gum different?
When it comes to food, not much different. Guar and Xanthan have a nice synergy in how they work but there are very notable differences in how they are produced.
- Xanthan is made in a labratory! Yup, it is essentially created from corn syrup in the corn fields, then shipped off to the lab where it is milled from the dried cell coat of a micro-organism called Xanthonomonas campestris. Scary sounding much?
- There are a good amount of cases where people are allergic to Xanthan, so they resort to Guar or the Mung bean.
- Xanthan is a protein versus Guar, which coming from a bean is a fibre. Some people prefer Xanthan because they cannot handle too much fibre in their diet.
In essence, Xanthan and Guar can be used hand in hand. I find Xanthan to be a bit more expensive then Guar at local grocers.
Thanks for letting me know my food is produced in a lab. So … how do I actually use these?
Well I’m glad you asked! (I’m quasi-interviewing my alter ego here or something, it’s weird?). When baking with these two bad boys, it varies based on what you are doing. Here’s a very simple rundown but I encourage you to expirement and adjust as you see fit:
For every cup of gluten-free flour:
- For Breads or Pizza, use 2 tea spoons. Breads rely much more heavily on gluten for their structure compared to cakes and cookies so it’s much more needed.
- For Cakes, use a single tea spoon
- For Cookies, it is not necessary but some people enjoy putting half to one teaspoon in.
- If you are using the Mung bean (as referenced above), split the above in half.
Oh boy I am excited as a young school girl! Where do I get this stuff?!
Xanthan gum and guar bean are actually pretty easy to find. I’ve been able to find them at my local Bulk Barns, but any large grocer or organic health food store will have them. Xanthan gum will run you a bit more for a package but it will last you a very long time so think of it as a great investment.
And that covers it! You can now sit down and talk to someone about Xanthan and Guar for a good 20 minutes and show how much of a expert you are. Feel free to comment if you have any suggestions on this post.
References: Wikipedia is your friend. Guar Gum, Xanthan Gum plus Google has a good amount of technical information on both the subjects.