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Wheat Gluten And How It Works
by
Dennis Weaver -
Gluten is made of two proteins
found in wheat flour and gives
its structure, strength, and texture. The gluten makes the bread. Without these marvelous little proteins, would not be bread. It also explains why it is so hard to make from rice, potato, rye, or oat flour and why wheat flour has to be added to these to these other flowers to make bread—only wheat has enough protein. When making rye or oat bread, you should not use more than two cups of rye or oats for every three cups of wheat flour.
Gluten is developed in the dough when the proteins absorb water and are pulled and stretched in the kneading process. When water is mixed with flour, the protein in the flour absorbs moisture. When dough is worked by mixing or kneading, these two types of protein twist together into strands—tiny ropes of gluten. As the yeast produces gases in the dough, mostly carbon dioxide, these strands trap the gas bubbles and the dough expands. When we put the in the oven, the gluten strands coagulate or solidify much as the protein in eggs solidifies as the egg cooks.
A high protein content is necessary for great and a low protein content is required for the tender crumb we love in cakes. It’s this coagulated protein that gives
its chewiness. In a cake, we don’t want chewiness
so we use a low protein content flour.
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Furthermore, to make a cake more tender, we use
a shortening (commercial shortening, butter, margarine,
or oil) to lubricate and shorten the gluten strands.
(Hence the descriptive name “shortening”.)
You can see how much protein is in flour by comparing
ingredient labels.
flours will have as much as 14% protein. All-purpose
flour is usually in the eight to ten percent range
and cake flour is less than that.
A typical
flour (this one happens to be a General Mills
flour) has 12% protein, 75% carbohydrates, one
percent fat, less than one percent ash, and 14%
moisture. (If exposed to air, the moisture content
will change and affect the baker’s formulation.)
The commercial wheat gluten that you buy in packages
from stores or sites like ours is actually the
wheat proteins extracted from the flour. It is
used to boost the protein content in flours, converting
a fairly week
flour to a strong one. It is especially helpful
when making oat or rye breads since the rye flour
or oats do contain the necessary proteins for
elasticity. We also use additional gluten with
whole wheat since the bran in whole wheat flour
cuts and damages the strands of gluten.
Add commercial wheat gluten with your flour. One-half
tablespoon per loaf of our Hi-Country Wheat Gluten
increases the protein content by about 3%. For
rye or 100% whole wheat breads we recommend up
to one tablespoon per loaf.
Baker's note: Should I use both gluten and dough
conditioner in my bread? In some recipes, yes.
The two have very different roles. While gluten
adds protein and structure to the bread, the dough
conditioner's primary role is to enhance the environment
for yeast growth creating a larger, lighter loaf.
Part of that is done by altering the pH of the
dough to make it slightly acidic.
Copyright 2007, The Prepared
Pantry (www.prepraredpantry.com ). Published by
permission in the Article
Directory: http://www.articledashboard.com
Dennis
Weaver is a baker, a recipe designer, and a writer.
He has written many baking guides and How
to Bake, a comprehensive baking and reference
e-book--available free at The
Prepared Pantry which sells baking and cooking
supplies and has a free online baking library.
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