Bread without carbs. If dreams define generations, this may be the defining desire of the 21st century. A carb-free bread would be the ultimate way to have your cake, eat it too, and ingest none of the fraught calories, or glutens, or sugars. Maybe this is why something called "cloud bread" yields thousands of results on Pinterest and Google. It offers the impossible: a guilt-free bread in the age of the Paleo Diet.
But what is cloud bread? And is it actually worth eating?
What Is Cloud Bread?
Cloud bread claims to be a high-protein bread alternative. It’s made by whipping egg whites and cream of tartar to achieve the soft, fluffy texture of a meringue. This mixture gets folded into the egg yolks, along with some sort of full-fat dairy product—like cottage cheese, cream cheese, or yogurt—and often a little bit of sweetener. Then the batter is spooned or piped into round disks on a rimmed baking sheet and baked. When the disks first come out of the oven, they have a crisp, melt-in-your-mouth quality, not unlike meringue. But allowing them to fully cool yields a chewier, slightly breadier texture.
What Are Cloud Bread's Health Claims?
Cloud bread contains half the calories of a regular slice of bread, and, depending on the recipe, has little to no carbohydrates. (Many recipes contain about one gram of carbohydrate per round of cloud bread.) It’s gluten free, as well. So, this bread works for those who are on Paleo, gluten free, or ketogenic diets, or stuck in 1997 and still rocking the OG Atkins diet.
While cloud bread may seem extremely high protein—being made of essentially only protein containing ingredients—it actually contains about the same amount of protein as a regular slice of bread, just without all the carbs to go along with it.
On the internet, people use cloud bread for a myriad of purposes: as buns for their burgers, as a vehicle for pizza toppings, to roll around hot dogs, to make eclairs, and as bread for sandwiches. It can be baked in big batches ahead of time and stashed in the freezer. A quick pop in the toaster revives the "bread," and it can be topped with turkey, peanut butter, or your preferred sandwich filling, and popped in a plastic bag for school or work.
Photo by Chelsea Kyle, Food Styling by Katherine Sacks
What does cloud bread taste like? And is it actually delicious?
No, not really. Our food director Rhoda Boone described it as, “A little worse than a rice cake.” Food editor Kat Sacks said she could see eating them if you were “really, really desperate for something resembling carbohydrates.” It’s not like cloud bread tastes bad, exactly. It’s got an inoffensive light, airy, bland eggy-ness about it. You’d never spit it out. It’s just not delicious.
