More on the Xanthan Conundrum

Xanthan gum, the bane of the gluten-freedom fighter's existence - or my existence, anyway - has had a lot of press lately. I'm sorry to report that very little of this publicity has been of the positive kind. I'm not unduly astonished by this negative attention, since my own relationship with the substance is, shall we say, highly ambivalent. Widely regarded as necessary for all gluten-free bakers, the dreaded Xg has nonetheless caused me quite a bit of grief in three-quarters of my experiments to date. I am deeply gratified to discover I am not alone in my pain.

The first occasion of Xg ballyhoo was during this past Sunday's episode of the Food Network's Next Iron Chef. Poor Mary Dumont, eager to flex her 'resourcefulness' muscles, stupefied the judges with the pineapple sauce for her scorpion fish tartare. 'I put just a little xanthan gum in it,' she explained, rather defensively I thought. She added it as a thickener, presumably, since enhancing viscosity is one of the things xanthan gum does best. Alton Brown's incredulous, 'A little?!' could only be appreciated by one such as myself, who has experienced first-hand - and on multiple occasions - the throat-coating metallic awfulness that an excess of Xg perpetrates on the unwary diner. Much as I admire Chef Dumont, in my opinion her overuse of xanthan gum was far too egregious an error to overlook and the judges agreed. I admit I felt a twinge of schadenfreude as she exited through the Chairman's black Curtain of Doom, a great chef brought down by the evil with which I have been struggling for weeks.

The second time xanthan gum came bobbing into my consciousness was when my dear friend Toad forwarded me an excellent article from that source of all knowledge and wisdom, The New York Times. The piece was all about a new Harvard undergraduate science course that teaches the basics of physics and chemistry through food science and molecular gastronomy. Visiting professors like Wylie Dufresne and Grant Achatz drop by the lab to give guest lectures on Parmesan noodles, fruit gelees, and olive oil jelly. Now that is an educational initiative I can really get behind! Toad and I are planning to enroll tout de suite.

One comment leapt from the page, however. During experiments on the aforementioned olive oil jelly (an invention of Carlos Tejedor from - where else? - Barcelona), instructors substituted guar gum for Xg, the original choice. Why? A postdoctoral researcher described the problem:

'At high concentrations, [xanthan gum] has strange properties we couldn't explain.'

Wait a minute. Did I hear that right? Are Harvard chemists telling us that xanthan gum behaves in ways unknown to science? Xanthan gum has defeated some of the best minds of our generation. This was one of my biggest 'AHA' moments of the last five weeks! Suddenly it all became clear, all my trials and tribulations: why xanthan gum was clearly required in some circumstances but not in others, seemingly identical; why even a pinch can be too much, despite the recommended dose of a half-teaspoon per cup of flour. The answer is so simple.

We're not supposed to understand. It's a mystery. Inexplicable. Defying all logic and scientific explanation.

Mind you, I can't say I'm the least bit surprised.