What's the right way to add extra gluten to dough?
I was lacking bread flour, which has 15% protein content. I needed to make something where this is crucial, since you need to roll out the dough really thin. I have all purpose flour with 10% protein content.
So I decided to extract some gluten from flour following this video.
The gluten extracted is already clumped together like in the video. I'm not sure what's the right way to add it to my dough to enrich it.
I can think of three ways:
- Dry it and let it powder, mix it in with powdered flour
- Mix powdered flour with it, mixing it well with water perhaps
- Stretch it out and add to kneaded dough and knead more
The main concern here is that since it's already clumped together, will it become a part of the gluten network of my dough and actually enrich it uniformly, or will it stay together as a strong sub-network within my dough which will continue to have a shallow gluten network.
So I can also think of some bad ways of doing it:
- Mixing it with flour without dissolving in water
- Mixing it with kneaded dough without stretching it out
I did #3, since I mis-sequenced my moves. I'd have wanted to do #2 instead. But I think #1 would be the most effective, if you have the time.
I don't know enough about molecular level details of gluten network formation to judge which of these will be effective and which will be ineffective. I'll have some empirical evidence for #3 but nothing to compare it with.
Is my concern valid? Are the methods 4 and 5 actually bad? Are methods 1-3 alright or is one of them bad as well?
Best Answer
Making gluten per that video is useful for an experiment but not so useful as a recipe addition. As Steve points out, the right solution here is to buy Vital Wheat Gluten. I buy it in the bulk food section at two local stores (WinCo, Central Market) and I've also seen it in the specialty flours section (usually in a Bob's Red Mill package) at better grocery stores.
Vital wheat gluten is a powder. Just add it to your dry ingredients when making bread. I usually grind my own flour so I know exactly what level of protein and gluten are in my wheat berries. If I'm using hard winter wheat or I want a denser loaf with smaller holes (think: sandwich bread) then I don't add any gluten. If I'm making a whole wheat or mixed grain loaf, then I always add some. For a whole wheat loaf, adding a tablespoon of vital wheat gluten is about right.
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How do you add extra gluten to flour?
Add the vital wheat gluten on a per-recipe basis and not to the entire bag of flour. The standard gluten/flour ratio is 1 tbsp. (15 ml) for every 2 to 3 cups (473 ml to 711 ml) of flour. Mix in the vital wheat gluten before you add the other dry ingredients once you have determined how to add gluten to flour.How do I add gluten to my bread recipe?
The recommended ratio is one tablespoon of vital wheat gluten per two cups of flour. This is especially helpful for bread recipes using low-protein flour varieties, such as whole wheat, rye bread, or bread recipes with lots of mix-ins, like nuts or fruits, to provide more structure and stability.Does more gluten mean more rise?
This web is capable of trapping gas bubbles; the stronger it is, the more gas it can hold, leading to more air in a baked good and thus a higher rise. At the same time, those interconnected strands become longer and stronger the more the gluten develops, which leads to more chewiness and toughness in the final product.How much gluten do I add to all-purpose flour for bread?
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