October 5, 2014 - 4:03pm
Vital What Gluten
I make a no knead bread that ferments for 4 nights. I like a 2:1 ratio of white whole wheat to white wheat. It's relatively dense. I tried adding a teaspoon of VWG and it didn't make a difference. I'm a beginner, so I need assistance with this. From the very limited understanding I have of bread making I don't think the VWG would help anyway since it's the long fermentation that creates the lining up of the gluten strands. But what do I know. So... would VWG help and if so, how much? Dough weight is 790g.
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is 75% protein. So the protein of the flour mix can be established algebraically via respective weights and protein levels.
... can you give an example?
from brand to brand. IIRC Arrowhead Mills is something like 55%, whereas Bob's Red Mill is 76%.
This is not strictly relevant, as the logic of the calculation still applies, and in any case I suspect the OP is right in doubting that VWG is the solution to the problem.
Lets say you have two flours, Vital Wheat Gluten (VWG) at 75% protein, and bread flour (BF) at 11.8% protein. Lets say you have 1% VWG and 99% BF in the mix (by mass), plus you have some water and other ingredients. For the calculation, you need true percent (T%). The wikipedia Baker % article should explain true percent versus bakers percent well enough.
(75% * T%VWG + 11.8% * T%BF) / (T%VWG+T%BF) = protein %
In this simple example, mixing only the two flours, no water or other ingredients, and the fact the two flours both add up to 100%, makes it a little simpler,
((75% * 1%) + (11.8% * 99%)) = 12.43%
and that VWG is not the answer. But we'd need more details of the formula and process to make a reasonable stab at figuring out where the problem really lies. My first guess is hydration - that's totally a shot in the dark, though.
How much VWG? I use King Arthur VWG and they recommend up to 1 TBSP (9g) per cup of whole grain flour. IIRC, Bob's Red Mill suggested around the same. Now, the weight of 1c of whole grain flour will vary, you can estimate around 110-115g per cup.
Do a Web search for alligation math (aka tic-tac-toe math). It is much easier than using algebra.
Its sometimes frustrating that there are different names for the same things!
One of the things about whole wheat flour is that it will have more enzyme action than white. Some of these (the protease clan) will degrade gluten. So in 4 day process, even at low temperatures, even with added gluten, one is going to see degradation. Degraded gluten = dense bread. You may wish to try the process with all white flour to see what that produces as a baseline and adjust your process/formula/expectations from there.
Remember "things"always move faster in whole wheat doughs than in white doughs, so timings need to be adjusted.
Hope this helps.
Four nights is too long. Two nights would make a much better bread. Also I would skip vital wheat gluten.
Jeff
the dough would be so degraded (and smell like bad beer) and fall apart at this long fermentation. Adding gluten is not the answer. Check out some great books from the library by Hamelman or Reinhardt or Laurel's book. They have a lot of answers. I refresh my levain 2 or three times a day and ferment for a few hours in warm environment. Proofing is much shorter. WW and rye times are even shorter because of the increased enzymatic activity.