Hi a huge welcome to Steve's kitchen. What is this
exactly? Well that will become very apparent as you watch this video through
Now a lot of people today are gluten intolerant I am very fortunate to have a
cast iron Constitution
I can eat pretty much anything but I do have a lot of friends that we cook for
where they can't have gluten in their diet. What exactly is gluten any way?
Hopefully this video will explain to you exactly what gluten is and why it's so
difficult to replace when we're baking so
join me now let me show you what it's all about
Now in modern days many the grains we rely on for all
foods Barley, Rye, Spelt even
but mainly wheat contains gluten
or at least it contains two proteins which when join together
that's gliadin and gluten join together
bond and become gluten it's these
bonded proteins which are very difficult for some people to digest and can cause
all sorts of problems. Now our stronger flours are high in protein or they're high
in the gluten and gliadin
and they're ideal for making our Pizzas and bread they're lovely and
stretchy elastic dough whereas our cake flours
they have a lower concentration of these proteins what does that mean exactly?
Well let me do some experiments and I'll show you. Now firstly I'm going to take
that strong high-protein flour
I'm going to put about 500 grams that's about a pound into a mixer
I'm going to mix it for ten minutes until I get a nice smooth elastic dough
Now after kneading that dough for 10 minutes we've got this wonderful
stretchy dough which is perfect for bread making and then I'm going to repeat the
same process with the cake flour which is a lot
lower in protein
Now with that cake flour after 10 minutes it's still an elastic dough but
you can see that it's a little bit coarser
it hasn't bonded together quite as well as the bread flour
however both of these doughs still contain gluten
this one would be great for pizzas and bread this one is far better for cakes
and cookies
and what we best remember it's actually the water we've introduced to this flour
that's enabled those proteins to bond together
the actual kneading of the dough just allows that glutens to stretch out and
get more elastic
but what exactly is gluten and how is it present in this dough
well we can actually do a little experiment to show that more closely
because the gluten that's in here the combination of those two proteins
is held together or at least it's surrounded by the starches
and we can wash those away and I think you'll find it quite fascinating
what we can produce I'll show you how come over to the sink
Now I've got my bread flour here and I'm going to put it into a strainer with
water in here
and what we're going to do is actually wash the starches
away, you have to be patient it will take quite a lot of time
There you see all these cloudy starch that's left at the top here we're going to tip that
away and eventually
after a few washes all we're going to have is pure gluten
what I have decided to do is run the water over the bread dough
until I get all the starch out, I've got the bowl below just to save me from losing
any of the gluten
eventually most to the starch is going to be washed out of this and we're going to
be left with this
elastic gluten mass. I'm then going to repeat the same process but this time
with the plain all purpose or cake flour. Now eventually after some minutes of
mixing look at this
we've ended up with almost pure gluten there might be a little starch still in
there
this is the small amount that came from the cake flour
a much larger amount from the bread flour. This one I've been working a little
bit and you can start to see
the elasticity in that gluten and it's really quite a remarkable substance
and if I start to work this one as well and turn it round it'll also become
a lot more elastic there it is it's starting to come together
now this stuff is just like rubber it's quite
the most amazing and this is the stuff that a lot of
people's stomachs cannot digest. Now how do you replace that in baking?
Well those of us that have used xanthan gum or psyllium husks
you know that it doesn't have this sort of texture
It is just like a big rubber band what I find remarkable is gluten absorbs
a huge amount of water this piece here is the dry piece I showed you earlier
is about the same size is this piece here and as it dries this one is light
as a feather
all the waters has come out. The surface tension keeps it round
and that's what produces great bread what produces great pizza bread
I really don't have an answer for anybody here there isn't anything I've come
across the can replace
pure gluten when baking but
maybe seeing in this form will give you a better understanding as to why
you can't tolerate gluten or perhaps
why we can't replicate gluten with xanthan gum
or psyllium husks it just really doesn't give the same sort of texture
so there it is there is the gluten from out of a pound bread flour
there's a gluten from cake flour the same amount. I think it's fairly
interesting I just wanted to share this with you
please share the love give this one the thumbs up, This stuff is sticky too
have a great time I'll see you in the next video
be good
Now if you did this same experiment with rice flour, maize flour, potato flour,
that is pretty much all starch it would just wash away you'd get no gluten
in there at all, so I hope this has being informative
for you I'm sorry if it hasn't really solved the problem with gluten
but at least you understand what it is you're playing be good
take care stay in touch subscribe to the channel
I'll see in the next video