Baking Question- all about gluten
I have had a lot of questions coming in about gluten, so I’m going to talk about it a bit over the next few newsletters. We have talked a little bit about gluten in a previous q&a that you can read here.
A brief recap is that I like to imagine gluten as little rubber bands inside the flour. When we add moisture to the flour and mix it to form a dough (I say dough here but I really mean anything that's made with flour - bread dough, cake batter, sweet pastry etc) then we begin to strengthen the gluten. I like to picture the gluten strengthening as the rubber bands become longer and stretchier.
Understanding the stages of gluten development can help hugely with your baking. You’ll know when doughs and mixtures are finished, and you’ll find it easier to know when you can swap normal flour out for gluten free flour (this is most definitely going to be a more thorough newsletter of its own soon!)
I think one of the easiest things to see gluten development with is sourdough, so that’s what I’m going to go through with you this week, with step by step photos of making a sourdough loaf, so you can watch the gluten development as it happens. This is meant to show you how the dough changes and explain what's happening, rather than being instructional on how to make a sourdough loaf. There are a lot of photos accompanying this information, and the test is always referring to the photo below it.
The first step is feeding my starter to get it ready for baking. This is being fed at a 1:2:2 ratio, so 1 part starter, 2 parts flour and 2 parts water. You can see in this photo that my fed starter is lumpy, has a slight stretch to it but has broken easily. This means there is a minimal amount of gluten development, with the stretch coming more from the liquid content of the starter, rather than from the gluten.
After leaving my starter overnight, it looks like this in the morning. It has doubled in size, thanks to the natural yeast in the sourdough. You can also see that the starter has a lot more stretch to it, whisk is due to the water in the starter hydrating the gluten in the flour.
I then put my starter in a stand mixer with some flour, wholemeal flour (often added in a small percentage to sourdoughs for added flavour), salt and water. After a few minutes of mixing you can see the dough has a significant amount of stretch, but is not particularly smooth, and is quite sticky. I then pop this into a bowl and leave it for half an hour.
After half an hour the dough looks like this. It is still not smooth, but it is a bit dryer as the gluten absorbs more of the water, which in turn helps to strengthen the gluten. I then do my first set of coil folds, which is a gentle stretching method that helps to slowly strengthen the gluten, this time through movement rather than through the hydration of the dough.
These coil folds are repeated every 30 minutes, slowly strengthening the gluten while allowing the dough to rise (this is important for sourdough as it helps to develop that sour flavour and large holes). The image below is after the second set of folds.
In total on this dough I did 4 sets of coil folds, then allowed my dough to rise a bit more before shaping. You can see through the photos how the dough changes from rough and sticky to becoming smooth and stretchy, all due to the gluten developing. The photo below is after all 4 sets of folds.
Once the dough is shaped I leave it in a banneton overnight in the fridge. The banneton helps the dough to keep its shape, because even though we’ve developed a lot of gluten, a sourdough is typically high hydration, meaning that it will loose its shape more easily.
Here are my final loaves, with a cross section cut. Because of all our beautiful gluten, the dough was able to rise with the yeast in the sourdough, creating deliciously light bread (although mine might be a little dark on the top...oops)
