Adding fiber to your buns/rolls 🥯

Dietary fiber has two main components: soluble fiber and insoluble fiber, which are components of plant-based foods, such as legumes, whole grains and cereals, vegetables, fruits, and nuts or seeds. A diet high in regular fiber consumption is generally associated with supporting health and lowering the risk of several diseases.

— Wikipedia, Dietary fiber

Bulking fibers – such as cellulose and hemicellulose (including psyllium) – absorb and hold water, promoting bowel movement regularity.[7] Viscous fibers – such as beta-glucan and psyllium – thicken the fecal mass.

— Wikipedia, Dietary fiber

Motivation

I have found that my gut benefits from a little bit of solluble dietary fibers in the form of psyllium husks to my diet. It may also have prebiotic benefits.

Dietary fibers are a curious thing, they cannot be broken down completely and so they are passed on. In another project I want to experiment with a dietary fiber sweetener that is growing in popularity in western cooking and “healthy” products. I like the thought of a sweetener (found naturally in chicory roots and Jerusalem artichokes) that the body can’t process and therefore just resides temporarily in the body - cool!

But in this case, I’ll use readily available soluble psyllium husks.

Benefits and drawbacks to baking

Benefits

• Fibers are prebiotic and psyllium can do great things for the stool. It relieves both mild diarrhea and constipation! (do drink extra water when using)

• Psyllium husks can store a lot of water, so it is quite easy to create a dough with high hydration, ‘baker’s percentage’:

But high hydration has multiple benefits. I have found that psyllium can even hold a lot of moisture so that the buns want go dry if you mix it in and add more water accordingly.

• Psyllium husks can be used in gluten-free baking when gluten development is unavailable. I will use it in in combination with gluten.

Drawbacks

• If psyllium and extra water is added into the dough, they can become quite moist, which means they’ll also go bad more quickly. So take that into account when you want a 90% hydration using psyllium…

• Psyllium and water will clump. We need to be smart about adding psyllium and water into the dough (but there are also other approaches!). What we want is a homogenious, even isotropic dough.

Different approaches

Incorporating fibers into the dough

The most obvious way. We need to take into account how much psyllium consumes water. I think it is best to:

1. Combine water and psyllium and let sit for 5 minutes to incorporate it.
2. Add more water and let absorb until the psyllium is saturated.
3. Add the mixture a “neutral ingredient” now that it is neither viscous or dry.
4. Find a way to really incorporate it evenly into the dough and avoid clumping.

Adding fibers externally to your standard dough

• As a topping
• As a bottiming
• Both

This will give a durum-wheat like italian bread texture that can be rough on the palate, and the fibers will be visible (it can be made into powder).

Benefit is that it is easy to add with no extra water, will provide a crisp surface on the bread