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Like gluten-free baking, low carb baking adds breads and other baked goods back into a diet where they’d otherwise be lacking. Most commonly, there are two reasons people get into low carb baking:
- To support the low carb diet necessary for diabetes
- To help lose weight by cutting carbs
In the case of diabetes, flours which are a very dense in carbs can cause serious blood sugar fluctuation. Marlene Koch of the Dlife Diabetes Healthy Company states, “The secret to ‘having your cake and eating it too’ while managing your blood sugar is to learn how to creatively curb the carbs or manage their impact on your blood glucose.ª
What’s the Secret to Low Carb Baking?
Also like gluten-free baking, the secret to low carb baked goods comes with ingredient substitution. In a low carb diet, you want to cut out any ingredients that have a high carbohydrate density. Again, white flour and all-purpose flour are some of the biggest offenders in having a high carb density, so most regular breads and baked goods are completely off limits.
In low carb baking, particularly for quick breads like cake batter, soy flour is typically substituted in place of all-purpose because the results are consistent even with a lower carb density. In bread making, combinations of flours other ingredients, including small portions of wheat and other flours, bran flakes, oats and oatmeal are used in place of standard white flour.
In addition to the flour, sugar substitutes such as Splenda® are often used in place of regular sugar. Always make sure you are using a substitute that is intended for baking, because some regular sugar substitutes can affect the consistency and taste of your bread or baked goods. If you’re concerned about affecting flavor, you can cut down the regular sugar used by one fourth without affecting taste.
For the low carb beginners
If you’re just starting a low carb diet, you may not yet be comfortable with doing ingredient substitutions or self-adjusting ingredient measures. In this case, it may be a good idea to start with low carb recipes, so you can get familiar with the typical amounts and types of ingredients used. You may also wish to compare a low carb recipe to a standard recipe to get a general idea of how to do the substitutions.