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Submitted by cranbo on February 20, 2011 - 2:06pm

wheat flours, protein percentages and fortifying flour

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?
Submitted by jrudnik on August 15, 2010 - 9:39pm

Beating the System

Okay, so today I was rumaging about my pantry in a quest to find my rye flour, which I don't use very often (blah blah blah... get to the point) and I was shocked by the different types of wheat flours I have. Would it be possible to just purchase AP flour and mix it with Vital Wheat Gluten in order to create various gluten levels? 

Submitted by hazimtug on November 20, 2008 - 1:56am

Don't have high gluten flour. Can I just add vital wheat gluten instead?


Have a quick question... I want to start baking more country style breads which usually call for high-gluten (high protein) flour. I am having difficulty finding such high protein flours here in Cyprus. The max is like 11.5%. Is it possible to add just vital wheat gluten to this lower protein flour to achieve an equivalent effect, i.e., enough structural strength to allow for nice/open crumb?

Thanks much!
Hazim

Submitted by zolablue on January 19, 2008 - 1:04am

Pierre Nury’s Rustic Light Rye - Leader


This is a new recipe I made from Daniel Leader’s book, Local Breads, for a Parisian loaf of

Submitted by bwraith on October 12, 2007 - 7:18pm

Pane Casareccio e Lariano di Genzano


Submitted by zolablue on October 4, 2007 - 5:13pm

Genzano Country Bread – Local Breads

I baked this very large, rustic Italian loaf (pagnotta) a couple weeks ago from Daniel Leader’s wonderful new book, Local Breads, page 197.  He states that it is to bake until almost black or charred for the most authentic loaf.  I didn’t go quite that far but you can see it developed a lot of color which I always prefer in my loaves.