Everyone loves cookies. Everyone loves bread. Most people love all manners of baked goods and pastries, even the most hardcore nutrition freaks and fitness competitors (though because of their discipline they will refuse to acknowledge it). Baked goods have become the forbidden fruit of health nuts because they typically contain a ton of sugars, processed carbohydrates and bad fats. However, just like with any style of cooking, it’s entirely possible to find clean ingredients to use in your recipes. You can make treats that are delicious but won’t completely derail your programs and desserts that kids will love, but that you don’t have to imagine are being stuck straight onto your hips and butt with a nail gun.
You can break baking ingredients down into the roles they play using food science, and find clean alternatives to fulfill the same roles. Below I’ll break down the various baking ingredients, the roles they play, and good alternatives that will make your snacks healthier but won’t make them taste like your old gym shoes.
A typical baking recipe calls for the following ingredients: flour, fat, sugar, liquid, leavening agents, egg, salt and fillers.
Flour gives structure to whatever it is you’re baking. The gluten in most flours traps air bubbles, while the starch sets to give your baked good its foundation. The problem with a lot of baking products is that white flour is nutritionally bereft of anything with much nutritional value.
Alternatives – almond meal, flax meal, garbanzo/white bean flour, rolled oats, oat bran.
All of the above provide oodles of fiber, better nutrients with the carbohydrates, and even some protein. Some of these ingredients can’t be kneaded and won’t give as soft a texture as white flour, but you’ll be hard-pressed to notice the difference in taste and the fiber will make your colon happy.
Fat helps to coat the gluten in the flour and give the baked good a tender texture. People usually use butter (which is fine), Crisco (which is the devil because of its high trans fat content), or vegetable/canola oil, which is usually destructively over-processed and likely full of GMOs and pesticides.
Alternatives – ghee/clarified butter, Smart Balance Spread, high polyunsaturated fat oil with a medium heat capacity such as Almond or Macadamia Nut Oil.
These sources of fat will give you that “buttery” texture but also provide you with a great dose of healthy mono- and polyunsaturated fats and nutrients. Ghee is a staple of Ayurvedic Medicine and has numerous documented health benefits. Pick a fat source with a high heat tolerance to prevent the fat from oxidizing.
Sugar is essential to baking for making the product sweet and for browning purposes to provide texture and crust, but it’s the big bad wolf of empty calories.
Alternatives – raw honey, molasses, bananas, xylitol, stevia.
You can fix the empty calorie sweetener problem by using ingredients that are sweet but also have some nutritional value. Honey, molasses and bananas all give a great bang for your buck by including a ton of nutrients with the sweet stuff. Xylitol and stevia are both naturally derived sweeteners that have little or no calories or carbohydrates.
Liquids help with mixing and spreading flavors throughout the baked good, combine with the starch to provide structure and steam to help raise the product. Milk is probably the most common liquid used, but the problem with milk is that it is really sugary and a lot of people are allergic to lactose.
Alternatives – unsweetened almond milk or grain milks, yogurt, organic raw milk.
Almond milk has no sugar, far less calories and even a little fiber, but will give you the same liquid effects as milk. Yogurt and raw milk are options if you aren’t allergic to dairy, and they have a much better nutrient profile than the highly processed stuff they try to pass as “milk” in most stores. If you used honey or molasses as a sweetener, you can actually reduce the liquid in the recipe accordingly.
Leavening agents such as baking powder and soda form CO2 bubbles, which are trapped by the gluten and cause your products to rise. These are fine and don’t provide any nutritional benefit or harm so they don’t need to be substituted.
Eggs help with leavening and add fat for texture. They also happen to be nature’s perfect food and unless you are allergic, there is no need to substitute. You can slightly improve the nutrition by finding free-range flax-fed eggs to increase the omega-3 content, but that is the only change I would recommend. For the love of god, please don’t use egg whites.
Salt enhances flavors. A pinch of sodium won’t kill you; leave this one alone too.
Fillers provide the flavors. Milk chocolate chips are tasty, but most of these fillings are just pretty packages of processed sugars and empty calories.
Alternatives – sugar-free dried fruits, shredded apples or carrots, >70% cocoa dark chocolate chips, peanut butter, get creative!
You should have an idea of different types of clean foods you can use as fillers for your baked goods. You are limited only by your taste and creativity, but make sure you use minimally processed clean foods with good nutrient contents.
Check out the recipes section of the site for some great clean baking recipes, including some amazing Flax seed muffins!
Peter Bauman – Peter is a chef first and personal trainer second. With a background in the biological sciences and degree in psychology, Peter knows how to make food that tastes great and keeps you lean and healthy.