Controlling Gluten Strength

Appears in

Published 2004

About

Not all baked goods benefit from a strong, elastic gluten. It’s desirable in yeasted breads, bagels, and in puff pastry; but it gives an undesirable toughness to other forms of pastry, to raised cakes, griddle cakes, and cookies. For tender preparations, bakers intentionally limit the development of gluten.

There are a number of ingredients and techniques by which the baker controls the gluten strength and consistency of doughs and batters. They include:

The kind of flour used. High-protein bread flours produce a strong gluten, low-protein pastry and cake flours a weak one, durum semolina (for pasta) a strong but plastic one.
The presence in the flour of oxidizing substances—aging and improving agents—which can increase the end-to-end linking of glutenin molecules and thus dough strength.

The water content of the dough, which determines how concentrated the gluten proteins are, and how extensively they can bond to each other. Little water gives an incompletely developed gluten and a crumbly texture; a lot of water gives a less concentrated gluten and a softer, moister dough and bread.

Food Words: Gluten

Though Chinese cooks discovered the useful properties of gluten long before anyone else, it was two Italian scientists who brought it to the attention of Europe. In a posthumously published manual of 1665 on optics, the Jesuit scholar Francesco Maria Grimaldi noted that durum semolina dough for pasta contains a thick, sticky substance that dries to a hard, brittle one. He named this substance gluten, using the Latin word for “glue.” Gluten in turn came from an Indo-European root gel-, which gave rise to a number of words meaning to form into a ball, to make a coagulated lump, to be thick or sticky: these include cloud, globe, gluteus, clam, cling, and clay. In 1745, Giambattista Beccari studied gluten more carefully and noted its similarity to substances characteristic of animals: that is, he recognized that it is what we now call a protein.

Ingredients That Contribute to the Structure of Doughs, Batters, and Their Products

Ingredient	Kind of Material	Behavior	Main Effects on Structure
Flour
Glutenin	Protein	Forms interconnected gluten network	Makes dough elastic
Gliadin	Protein	Bonds weakly to glutenin network	Makes dough plastic
Starch	Carbohydrate	Fills gluten network, absorbs water during cooking	Tenderizes dough, sets structure during baking
Water		Allows gluten network to form; dilutes it	Small and large amounts produce tender products
Yeast, leavenings	Live cells, purified chemicals	Produce carbon dioxide gas in doughs and batters	Lighten and tenderize products
Salt	Purified mineral	Tightens gluten network	Makes dough more elastic
Fats, oils, shortenings	Lipids	Weaken gluten network	Tenderize products
Sugar	Carbohydrate	Weakens gluten network, absorbs moisture	Tenderizes products, preserves moistness
Eggs	Proteins; fats and emulsifiers (yolk only)	Proteins coagulate during cooking; fats and emulsifiers weaken gluten network; emulsifiers stabilize bubbles and starch	Supplement gluten structure with tender protein coagulum; tenderize products; slow staling
Milk; buttermilk	Proteins, fats; emulsifiers, acidity	Proteins, fats, emulsifiers, acidity weaken gluten network; emulsifiers stabilize bubbles and starch	Tenderize products; slow staling

Stirring and kneading the flour-water mixture, actions that stretch and organize the gluten proteins into an elastic network.
Salt, which greatly strengthens the gluten network. The electrically positive sodium and negative chlorine ions cluster around the few charged portions of the glutenin proteins, prevent those charged portions from repelling each other, and so allow the proteins to come closer to each other and bond more extensively.
Sugar, which at the concentrations typical of raised sweet breads, 10% or more of the flour weight, limits the development of gluten by diluting the flour proteins.
Fats and oils, which weaken gluten by bonding to the hydrophobic amino acids along the protein chains and so preventing them from bonding to each other.
Acidity in the dough—as from a sourdough culture—which weakens the gluten network by increasing the number of positively charged amino acids along the protein chains, and increasing the repulsive forces between chains.