March 9, 2014 - 10:23pm
Adding wheat gluten
Hi,
I have been experimenting with low gluten and other flours that don't contain gluten and have been adding wheat gluten. However, I am finding that the gluten doesn't behave like the gluten in actual wheat. It works for some things like tortillas or getting the flour to bind, but doesn't seem to provide the structure required for actually allowing the dough to rise. Is this because the processing to obtain the gluten or proteins, modifies the proteins in a way that doesn't allow them to react the same way as they do in wheat flour? Just curious because it doesn't seem to work properly.
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hamletcat,
First, are you calculating how much gluten you're adding to the dough to make a high percentage? The VWG I use is only sixty-something percent gluten. You calculate how much is in your flour, and the ratio of how much VWG you're adding. You want to aim for about 12 to 14 percent gluten total.
Second, I wonder if the dough needs to be worked differently when adding VWG, versus using flour that has plenty of gluten already in it. It may take more kneading to get the VWG distributed throughout the dough evenly. I've never taken the time to figure it out. I just use bread flour. But, logically, it would seem to me that it should take some time to get the pieces of concentrated gluten to spread out and fully incorporate into the dough. Are you doing a windowpane test?
I'm using roughly 3T per cup of flour which seems to give it the right percentage. I never thought of the more kneading. That makes sense though, as it is spread differently in the wheat flour.
I'm not near my VWG right now to see what the volume measurements are, but 3T per cup seems about right, if you mean that you are adding 3T plus the cup of flour, not substituting 3T of VWG in place of 3T out of the cup of flour. And, of course, that would be for gluten-free flour. Anyway, maybe extra kneading is required. Or, maybe an autolyse will help. I don't know.
that contain no gluten and weigh 140 g per cup, your vwg is 65% protein and the 3 T weigh 24 g like mine you are adding enoungh VWG to be at 9.5% - like a weak AP flour (15.6 /164 = .09.5) That doesn't men your home crafted flour will act like one though. It probably won't but depends on what the non gluten flour is ...
DA, I was assuming one cup to equal somewhere around 125g - 135g, and I think I remember (vaguely) the Hodgson Mills VWG I use calls 4tsp=12g on their box. They put the gluten content at 8g per 12g of VWG. If those numbers are anywhere near right, 3Tbs of VWG (9tsp = 28g) plus about 125g of flour would give us 12.2% gluten. Even at your 140g of flour per cup, it would turn out 11.11% gluten. I think that should be close enough. But, as I said above, I'm not near my VWG box, so I could be way wrong. Volume measurements are always a crap-shoot anyway.
an level with a knife for AP flour = 140 g. I just weighed my VWG and t weighs 8g per T or 24 g for 3 T . * .65 = 15.6 g of gluten. Flour is 140 g for the cup and 24g for the VWG =164 g of flour. Gluten % = 15.6/164 = .095.
I just did it again and all the volumes converted to weights were the same.
What is odd to me is that most folks use non gluten baking flours for a reason - so they don't have gluten in the bread and adding gluten to it is fairly strange..
It is strange, but I seem to have difficulty digesting wheat flour, and it isn't because of the gluten. Although lately I have had less trouble with the white than the whole wheat. I am fructose intolerant and it is possible that it is just the fructans in the wheat flour that are causing the issues. Nevertheless, it is possible that I need to add more wheat gluten. I will check my measurements and see what comes up.