Gluten

The difficulty for the baker is that gluten is the backbone of breads and many other baked goods and is a component of wheat flour, the baker’s main ingredient. In addition, gluten proteins are found in rye, barley, spelt, and oats.

Nevertheless, it is possible to bake a variety of products using gluten-free flours, such as rice, millet, buckwheat, amaranth, and quinoa flours, potato starch, cornstarch and cornmeal, and flours from chickpeas and other legumes. The structure-building properties of gluten proteins must be supplied by other ingredients, such as egg proteins and vegetable gums. These ingredients don’t work the same way as gluten, however, so the texture of the products will differ. Doughs are less elastic, and baked items are likely to be more crumbly than similar items baked with wheat flour.