13 hours ago, jedovaty said:A few pages back on this post I asked about adding body to oatmilk-based ice cream. @andrewk512 responded with a suggestion of 4% inulin. I have not had a chance to try this yet.
Meantime, I happened to be looking over ingredients for Bruster's oat-milk based ice creams, and in addition to a few other oils and creative ingredients, they add pea protein powder. Could this be a way to add body as well? I've had pea protein powder and it is quite strongly flavored and puts a very dry, powdery, mealy texture into any drink or food product. They must be using very little, so perhaps this idea is not quite right. It does appear towards the end of the base ingredients list before getting to the salts, gums, etc. while the rapeseed/canola oil is ahead of both it and dextrose. Hmm, maybe it's the oil or a combination of both the oil and protein. Link here as an example, click the "nutrition info & allergens" for the pdf.
Hm.. I've never tasted pea protein powder but from my experience with protein powders and pea protein based foods I can imagine it would not be the greatest flavor. You'd probably have to "hide" it under a strong flavor like chocolate... not the greatest start for a home recipe. Emulsified oil could probably add body as well but I am not sure how you would predict the effects on the freezing point.
I was experimenting with maltodextrin and modified starches like ultratex for a while. The maltodextrin added body but I really couldn't reconcile with the flavor (this may have just been the quality of the ingredient I had, haven't bought from anywhere else to test it yet). The ultratex had a cleaner flavor but was unpredictable and made everything really gummy. I was never really satisfied with my experiments, but one of the issues I faced was I was trying to thicken very thin clean flavors where you could easily tell if anything was clouding them (I was trying to make both a white and a red wine sorbet, after about 20 tests I realized that the best wine sorbet just tastes like a crappy grape sorbet). Inulin has its own flavor but it is only minimally perceptible in a light flavored fruit base and I find the texture improvements worth it.
I think in a oat milk base you might be able to hide things more easily. You could try 2% maltodextrin.
