Gluten

To try to document dough development of a lean dough, I created a video of mixing some lean, 59% hydration dough in my KitchenAid 5qt mixer at speed #2 (the 2nd click). 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBZFYzeK1Vo

I'm trying to get a better idea of knead times for my mixer with respect to different doughs. Hamelman in "Bread" says 6.5 - 7.5 minutes for moderate gluten development for KAid stand mixer. He recommends 900-1000 total revolutions for moderate dough development, so with some info from fthec and KAid:

#1 (stir): 40 rpm 
#2: 54 rpm 
#3: 79 rpm 
#4: 104 rpm 

 This means:

Time (minutes) Revolutions
0 0
1 54
2 108
3 162
4 216
5 270
6 324
7 378
8 432
9 486
10 540
11 594
12 648
13 702
14 756
15 810
16 864
17 918
18 972
19 1026
20 1080

According to the stats, I may still have kneaded for too short of a time (H. also says that doughs with hydration under 60% will take longer to develop, as will doughs that have high hydration). It really started smoothing out at about 8 minutes, even more substantially at ~13 minutes. I guess next time I'll have to push it further, and see what happens. 

EDIT: based on some feedback, I have corrected my original post. 

I set out to locate a list of protein levels in common flours, and I found a handy list, reposting for your perusal:

Flour Names & Protein Percentages

• King Arthur Queen Guinevere Cake Flour (8.0%) 
• King Arthur Round Table Pastry Flour (9.2%) 
• Caputo 00 Extra Blu Flour (9.5%) 
• Generic All-Purpose Flour (10.3%) 
• King Arthur All-Purpose Flour (11.7%) 
• Caputo 00 Pizzeria Flour (12.0%) 
• General Mills Harvest King Flour (12.0%) 
• Robin Hood All-Purpose Flour (12.0%) 
• King Arthur Bread Flour (12.7%) 
• Bob's Red Mill Semolina Flour (12.9%) 
• Five Roses All-Purpose Flour (13.0%) 
• Eagle Mills All-Purpose Flour (13.3%) 
• King Arthur Whole Wheat Flour (14.0%) 
• King Arthur Whole Wheat Organic Flour (14.0%) 
• King Arthur Sir Lancelot Flour (14.2%) 
• Arrowhead Mills Vital Wheat Gluten Flour (65.0%) 
• Hodgson Mill Vital Wheat Gluten Flour (66.6%) 
• Bob's Red Mill Vital Wheat Gluten Flour (75.0%) 
• Gillco Vital Wheat Gluten Flour (75.0%) 
• King Arthur Vital Wheat Gluten Flour (77.8%) 

FYI, this came from a very handy page & calculator I came across at http://tools.foodsim.com/
The reason I was interested in this is because I wanted to find out how much my protein would be boosted by adding vital wheat gluten to my flour. 
I usually use KA All Purpose, which has 11.7% protein. To supplement, I planned to use Bob's Red Mill Vital Wheat Gluten Flour. 
WARNING...MATH AHEAD :)

• 1 cup KA AP flour weighs  about 125g. If 11.7% is protein, then there is about 14.63g of protein per cup of this flour
• 1 tbsp of Bobs Red Mill Vital Wheat Gluten weighs about 8.5g. If 75% is protein, then 6.375g of protein per tbsp of this flour.
• 1 cup KA AP + 1 tbsp Bob's Red Mill Vital Wheat Gluten = 21g TOTAL protein
• 21g of protein / 133.5g total ingredient weight = .161, or 15.73% of protein in the flour mixture

You can use this same method to calculate the adjusted protein in your flour. 


END OF MATH :)


What's interesting to me is that at the recommended dosage, adding 1 tbsp. of Bob's Red Mill gluten to every 1 cup of KA flour would make an extremely high protein flour, higher than what is typically commercially available. I wonder if it would make it totally unusable & gummy?


Then again, if you had a relatively weak, generic AP flour (9% protein), then 1 tbsp per cup would probably bump you to a very respectable 13.2% protein level, close to that of KA Bread Flour. For those that have actually tried this technique, I wonder if it actually performs in a similar way (e.g., similar to KA Bread flour) or do other flour factors (such as ash content, type of wheat, etc) play more into the overall performance of the flour and resulting bread?

Just recently, Mariana-Aga, a fellow baker who I have great respect for and who is an occasional poster here, presented a very interesting paper with extensive photos on the development of gluten. For the purposes of her research and documentation she used a food processor to mix and develop, then over develop the dough. All of the various stages are carefully documented and you can see the tell tale signs of the dough being over worked and ruined.

 This experiment shows what over kneading will do to your dough. It is also possible to over develop your dough by simply over fermenting it, either at room temperature or in the refrigerator. We have all had a dough turn slack and sticky from not being attended to in the proper time.In fact unless you use a food processor, it is very hard to mechanically over develop or over mix your dough at home. The mixers most home bakers use are not capable of over mixing unless you take a long nap while mixing.

If you don't learn anything more from this great post other than to finally know that there is no fixing it if you get in this situation. I have tried adding more flour to the extreme, and it never works. You may as well resign yourself that this will never be right and toss it in the compost.

If you have seen this, you know what I'm talking about!

And finally, I learned a nice trick for cleaning that unbelievably sticky gooey dough mess from my bowls and hands. This alone is reason enough to visit this very informative blog post by Mariana.. I hope some of you find it as interesting as I have.

Eric

PS: This page is written in Russian. Google Translate had no trouble translating to English.