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Very interesting article about gluten/bread

writersblock (9b/10a)

11 years ago

The New Yorker this week has a really fascinating article about the gluten-free thing, but also much of the article is about regular bread making, so worth a read if you bake from scratch at home, especially whole grain breads:

Here is a link that might be useful: What's so bad about gluten?

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Comments (4)

plllog
11 years ago
Good article, Writersblock! Thank-you for posting it!

There wasn't anything in it that I hadn't already been informed of by other articles posted in this forum, but it's very well written and a great overview.

One caveat: I've found that vital wheat gluten improves my home milled, whole grain sourdough because there's a delicate interplay between the protein content, starches, and yeasts, that can exhaust the dough before it's fully baked. Either VWG or commercial yeast will continue to be a crutch in my baking, and I'm okay with that. I'm not put off by what pure protein looks like raw, which is made much of in the article.

I'm cool with saitan, too (no, I'm not making my own, but it's great grilled in a sandwich with lots of veggies). Of course you can make weird crap out of pure protein. That doesn't prove anything! Like in middle school when the kids all whisper that the hot sauce at Taco Bell is so vicious you can shine pennies with it. It's not. It's just inefficient. There's a lot of vinegar in the hot sauce. Pure vinegar shines pennies even better!

Since most of the article is about poking holes in myths, I find this particularly ludicrous. I kept waiting to be told why VWG is bad, other than silly games, and it never came out. What they proved is that you need digestive enzymes to transform protein. Duh.
User
11 years ago
Thanks Writersblock. It is a good article. I'm happy to say that the bread I make is just flour, water, yeast and salt. I've never added vital wheat gluten. Never found it necessary even when making whole wheat.

Thankfully, no one that I share my breads with are gluten free.

~Ann
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annie1992
11 years ago
Like Ann T, I've found that my bread doesn't require vital wheat gluten. I used to use it when making whole grain breads, then when I was out of it, I made some without it and it turned out fine. I never bought any more.

Unfortunately, my oldest daughter has just been diagnosed as being celiac, she says the thing she'll miss most is my homemade bread, so I'm busily trying to adapt. We'll see how successful I am, I guess.

Annie
plllog
11 years ago
Annie, are you using your own mix, or one of the gluten free blends?

BTW, what matters with the whole grain baking is the protein content of the grain. King Arthur's whole wheat is 14%, and doesn't need VWG. I don't have numbers for Arrowhead Mills red wheat berries, which is what I can buy in bulk locally, but it's consistently not as strong. I've tried and tried coaxing it, but the VWG is the only thing that keeps it from sinking under its own weight. I have Palouse Brand wheat which is 14% but I save it for pizza where a quick strong oven pop is crucial. If the numbers for the new crop are the same, I'll be buying buckets and seeing how it does with bread. :)

There's a LOT that goes into it if you're not using a standardized brand.

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