Keto dough?

The Struggle

The keto diet has become quite popular in the last few years. This low carb regiment puts your body into dietary ketosis. This causes your body to begin using its own fat as fuel rather than carbohydrates. Thankfully, we are not here to debate the benefits of different diets. Though we will say any diet that allows you to slam an entire pound of bacon without regret is okay in our books. So if this is something you want to find more about or are willing to give a go, it could be as simple as doing a google search into something like beginners guide keto to get started. The more you know when it comes to starting a keto diet, the better it’ll be. But one thing that causes a lot of regrets is giving up bread and baked goods. There is something about the bread that we are drawn to. Whether it is the smell, the texture, or the nostalgia, there is something craveable about bread. So it’s no wonder we started getting questions around:

“What ingredients can I use for Keto baking?”

Keto Cravings

The keto diet calls for a very small amount of net carbs per day – between 20-50g. Net carbs are the amount of consumed that are not from dietary fiber. Just to put that in perspective the average pizza has 36 carbs PER SLICE. So yeah… I hate to shatter your dreams, but pizza is off the menu…. Or is it? As with anything new diet, people set forth to recreate their favorite dishes but under the guidelines of the diet. And we have a large amount of ingredients that can help with making dough look and feel like traditional breads and baked goods. Many of the I’m Free Gluten Free products will also work for Keto baked goods. I’m Free Perfect Gluten Replacement can aid in the structure of the baked goods. As well as the I’m Free Perfect Baking Powder, which can help the dough along with the final rise during the baking process.

In order to make it all work, it comes down to understanding how the carb counts work. So the best way I can explain it is you will need to count the carbs for every recipe. Let’s say your dough recipe has 30g of carbs and 10g of those are dietary fiber. You must subtract the 10g of dietary fiber from the 30g, this gives you 20g net carbs of dough per recipe. The next step would be to spread that dough into equal portions. Let’s say this recipe is for dinner rolls and one recipe of dough (20g net carbs) yields 10 dinner rolls. Each dinner roll will have 2g of net carbs.

The next thing to think about is the type of flours you will need to use. Almond flour is most commonly used but ground pork rinds also stand in for regular flour. These flours will not make a dough like we know and love. They need something to add structure. The structure can be from the I’m Free Perfect Gluten Replacement, but even that may need a helping hand with flours that are so dense. My last suggestion on an ingredient is Vital Wheat Gluten. Now, before there is an uproar… let me explain. Keto diets do not have to be gluten free. The vital wheat gluten is high in protein and low in carbs. It can also give keto flours the body they need to make doughs that are close to the real thing. The vital wheat gluten could be the ingredient your recipe needs to add that texture and structure to the baked goods. We encourage you to try new things and attempt to make that perfect keto friendly pizza or donut to conquer the cravings.

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