Sweet potatoes create gluten-free pancake.

Sweet potatoes shouldn't be just for holiday cooking. With ever-growing interest in health and natural foods, the sweet potato is quickly finding its place in the diet the year around. From processed baby foods to main dishes, casseroles, salads, breads and desserts, sweet potatoes add nutrients to meals.

Here's a new twist. In their search for a light, fluffy pancake that's acceptable and safe for those who've had to banish wheat from their diets, USDA-ARS chemists found that a flour made from rice and sweet potatoes is a superior wheat substitute. They determined that the ideal pancake contains 20% to 40% sweet potato flour. Individuals diagnosed with celiac disease, which may be as prevalent as one in 200 in the global population, are unable to digest gluten. For them, gluten proteins trigger an autoimmune response that can lead to serious health problems.

The ARS' rice- and sweet potato-based pancakes are not only suitable for those suffering from celiac disease and wheat allergies, they're also standouts in terms of their antioxidant content, with 56% more beta carotene than traditional wheat-based pancakes. ARS researchers experimented with different amounts of sweet potato flour. Then they scrutinized pancakes' textural and nutritional properties. They evaluated the cakes' hardness, cohesiveness, springiness and chewiness. Since gluten proteins give dough and batter an essential visco-elasticity, baked goods made without the proteins run the risk of being flat, brittle and jaw-achingly dense.

The gluten-free pancakes were prepared using rice flour and rice flour replaced with various amounts--10%, 20% and 40%--of sweet potato flour. The textural properties of the cooked pancakes, such as hardness and chewiness, generally increased with time after cooking. They decreased with increased sweet potato flour replacement. On the other hand, cohesiveness decreased with time, but increased with increased sweet potato flour levels. Nutritional properties of the rice-sweet potato pancakes, such as protein content, dietary fiber, total carbohydrates and calories, were generally comparable with those of their wheat counterpart. The only significant difference was in the beta-carotene content, which increased from 5.2 [micro]g per g to 236.1 [micro]g per g when sweet potato flour was incorporated into the rice pancake formulation.

Further information. Kim Daigle, USDA-ARS Food Processing and Quality Research, Southern Regional Research Center, Room 127, 1100 Robert E. Lee Blvd., Building 001 SRRC, New Orleans, LA 70124; phone: [phone]; fax: [phone]; email: [e-mail].