Milled Flax in baking-- to be avoided???
Ok, so, I've got one of those, looking for the advice of a nutritional-chemist kind of questions. (Is there one? There ought to be. :P) Anyway, here goes...
Pretty much everyone knows you can't use Flax Oil in baking. It's not heat-stable, so the polyunsaturates reduce to trans-fats during the cooking process, yada yada yada. Not so good. However, the same sources that tell you NOT to use flax oil in baking, will often turn around, and recommend using milled flax as an egg replacer in baking recipes. I tried Googling this the other day, and once again, got conflicting arguements. One article said that the additional fiber and roughage in the seed somehow shielded the oil (even though the seed was milled?), and therefore, the oil stayed stable throughout the process. In that case, why wouldn't the fiber and particles in say, whole-wheat flour, keep Flax Oil from going all Trans-evil on us? :P
So, I'm wondering if anyone ever received a final, professional answer on this one. A TON of people on here use Flax as egg replacer, so I thought maybe the whole thing sounded like something that we ought to get straightened out?
Great question! I, too, would love to know!
Whoa. That IS a good question. Very perceptive... nice work, MizzouKitten!
I would think the amount of flaxseeds used as egg replacer is negligible. Flaxseed is 66% fat (ie. about 66% oil), so only a little over half the amount (2/3 tbsp) is subject to trans-fat-ization. And even then, I'm not sure what percentage of flaxseed oil is an unsaturated fat... so the actual amount of material vulnerable to heat is probably even lower than 2/3 tbsp.
At any rate, I would love to hear more about this... especially if anyone has made some definitive conclusions.
Yeah, I suppose as egg replacer, it would only add a negligible amount of possible ickiness. But I saw a muffin recipe the other day that used something like a cup of milled flax (kind of a variant on bran muffins), and I was pretty much drooling, because I love the taste of flax on cereal and things. But if it would void all their benefits, than I'd be a lot better off using that cup of flax in my smoothies and cereal I suppose.
Thanks for the link Baypuppy... yet another science-y group that seems to think it's ok. Still makes me wonder though; I mean, it hardly makes sense for them to be ok in baked goods. Hm...
My ignorance is showing again...I've heard about the flax seed/oil thing for years now, esp. recommended here for premenopausal women, of which I'm one. But hang on a second. Flax is where we get linen, right? So isn't linseed oil, flax-seed oil? And linseed oil is poison! How does that work...do they press it differently or add something to it?
In my idiocy I was just throwing a spoonful of whole seeds on my food and chomping away--which irritated my, uh--lower digestive tract...and I discovered my "spoon" was about 3 times the recommended size... ::)
Well, Linseed oil is processed with Petroleum, and some other rather nasty things, so while it IS Flax seed oil, it's hardly resemblant to it's former seed. We're talking about cold-pressed, plain old flax oil, which is incredibly good for you, due to its Omega 3 content.
As for your issue with Flax seeds, they're generally only considered to be beneficial to your body if you either A) Chew them up really, really well when you're eating them :P, or B) whizz them around a coffee grinder or food processor a few times before eating them in order to break up the shell. The good stuff is all inside the seed, and if the shell isn't properly cracked, you don't get the nutritional benefits. However, a large spoon of uncracked seeds would still swell in your stomach, sucking up liquid as it went (the seed husk is quite fiberous), so it makes sense that you might have gotten a slight negative effect on your digestive system if you dropped large amounts of them into yourself. :P You probably gave your intestine a rather nasty shock; it's not used to working that hard. :P So start with a tablespoon or two of whole seeds, grind/mill them, and drink an extra glass of water with whatever you sprinkle them on, and next time, you ought to be alright. I do thoroughly recommend throwing milled flax into smoothies, cereals, and things, it gives them a great nutty flavor; so don't give up on them yet! :D
See why I love this place? It's just full of people who are smarter than me! ;) Now that I know about the "milling" I can get out my spice mill and try again. I wonder if the swelling-up part will help my apppetite behave itself... ???
Heh, nice thought. When I was a kid there were these natural diet pills that you chewed before meals --tasted like cardboard-- and then chased down with water. They'd swell up and take up all your tummy room. My mom had some luck dieting with them. Of course, they were just fiber tabs, probably milled psillium or something. 8)
I wonder if milling is enough to make them digestible for someone with diverticulosis... I have relatives that I'm shy of praising flax to because I'm worried about upsetting their bowel.
Ooh fiber pills as diet-aids... that's not a pleasant thought. Seems rather miserable, actually. :P But I suppose it would work, at least until your body got accustomed to the fiber increase... then you would have to take more of them for it to be effective... Wonder if anyone suffered fiber-pill addictions. :P
After googling this topic with various titles, I stumbled upon this page.
http://www.shirleys-wellness-cafe.com/flaxoil.htm#ground
I searched for a good twenty minutes and found this quote halfway down the page:
"Baking effects: ALA in whole and milled flaxseed also appears to be stable to heat equal or greater than the temperatures involved in baking batters and doughs such as muffins and yeast bread. Thermal stability was shown in 1992 by the absence of significant changes in peroxide values and fatty acid composition when both forms of flaxseed were heated for 60 minutes at either 100 C (212?F) or 350 C (662 F). Furthermore, gas liquid chromatography showed no signs of new transisomers of ALA or of cyclic fatty acid formation in samples subjected to these degrees of heat. detail"
Although, the experiment wat done over ten years ago, I'm assuming it still has some validity.
This really is a great question, and I'm not sure if this evidence is fully satisfying, and I would love to hear more about this topic.
Hey, that sounds like some pretty valid evidence! That's more the dorky-researchy kind of stuff I was looking for. :P (Just because I kind of like reading it. :P) Thanks Nubby! It would be good to see some more recent research, but I will feel better about baking with at least small amounts of milled flax in the meantime. (Maybe not those flax muffins quite yet, but a few "eggs" worth won't ruffle my feathers, so to speak. :P) Again, thanks for digging up some pretty knowledgable-sounding dirt for us!
I use flax seed oil for my lupus. I know it has to be refrigerated and should be cold pressed. Now you have pointed out why this is. I know that heating it negates the essential fatty acids I am after in the flax oil. It is the only vegan source of some of the Omega fatty acids.
I can't imagine that using the mucoid properties of the seeds for replacing eggs would be a problem. I think that flax oil is or should be cold pressed. When you blend them to make egg replacer it is not really the same thing, although it should release some oil, I would think.
Good question!