The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

How does vital wheat gluten affect doughs/breads?

icantbakeatall's picture
icantbakeatall

How does vital wheat gluten affect doughs/breads?

I have been experimenting with it but dont fully understand how its affecting my breads. It seems to make the dough much more elastic. Any thoughts would be appreciated!

Weizenbrot's picture
Weizenbrot

I used VWG at about 1%-1.5% of the flour weight in a whole-grain wheat and rye recipe (no white flour). My loaf rose noticeably better than the previous time without the VWG. Of course, in a home environment there could have been other factors affecting the rise but I would use it again the next time I make this recipe. No noticeable effect on dough elasticity. 

The recipe was Rye Sandwich Meteil, Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, p. 112.

clazar123's picture
clazar123

Think of the crumb of your loaf as balloons in a net. The more gluten, the more netting, the chewier (and sometimes tougher) the crumb. For a tender bread, you want the least amount of netting that will hold the bubbles/balloons without releasing the gas.The balloon walls are starchy gel and melt in your mouth after being baked. They take proper dough hydration and the manual labor of kneading to develop.You want balloon walls that are thick enough to trap the gas and you want enough gas production (yeast,food and time) to make a good bubble matrix.  When you take  bite, the gel crumb should melt a bit and the gluten protein should provide a light chew, delivering the fermented flavor to your palate.

French flour is actually a lower protein (i.e. lower gluten) but the dough is well hydrated and well developed (both the gluten AND the starchy gel) so that more gas is trapped by netting and thicker walled balloons but the crumb is tender and not chewy. So adding VWG will trap more bubbles and allow a taller rise but in the end will be chewier. Having a well hydrated and worked dough will result in a good rise but a tender crumb. So you could use VWG as a shortcut tool to a taller, better looking loaf. But it will be chewier and a few days into its age, it will be tough.

Gluten free and rye dough have almost no gluten/netting so these doughs release the bubbles of gas on the surface. That is why xanthan gum and the natural elastins in rye are important- they make the dough a bit thicker so the bubbles don't rise and escape as quickly (like in a glass of champagne). The trick is to trap enough gas bubbles in a thick enough dough and then set the dough by baking to make a tender loaf before too many escape and leave you with a brick.

Bread really is a balancing act but there are SO many ways of making it.

icantbakeatall's picture
icantbakeatall

Thank you so much! I have been adding it to my roll recipe and couldn't figure out why it looked so great, but seemed to kind of mush together when you touched it or bit into it. I figured it was the VWG but wasn't positive since I hadn't made that recipe much before. I read online that if you have AP flour and the recipe calls for bread flour, you can make the substitution by adding 1 tsp VWG per cup of AP flour. But that was way too much, apparently. I tried adding about 1 to 1.5 tsp instead of 3 tsp (since there were 3 cups of AP flour) and that seemed to work much better. Really interesting!

yozzause's picture
yozzause

Hi  To try and get a better physical understanding of what gluten is  ad some water to the gluten and see what develops  or even better is to do a gluten test to see what Is actually in your flour.   see link  for a previous post on this topic.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/12474/how-do-i-find-out-properties-my-oganic-flour

 

regards Derek