Science: What is Gluten? Here's How to See and Feel Gluten

[Music] we use wheat flour in countless recipes from chewy loaves of rustic bread and pizza dough to tender cakes and some muffins all these baked goods rely on something called gluten how does this work first let's start with a simple question what is gluten all wheat flours contain two important proteins glutenin and gliadin now in the presence of water these two small proteins change shape and bond together this creates an elastic network of proteins called gluten which has the ability to trap air much like a balloon this gluten network fills with swollen starch granules and gas bubbles allowing breads to rise and cakes to gain some gentle structure now here in the Test Kitchen we've long known that gluten is important in baking but mainly we've done a lot of talking not a lot of showing so what is it on a tangible level can you see it can you feel gluten I'm in a simple experiment to find out just that I made two basic dough's by mixing flour and water in a food processor until a smooth ball formed and for one dough I use cake flour which contains the least amount of protein of all the different types of flours that you can find at the grocery store between 6 and 8 percent usually in addition cake flour is often bleached which further weakens the proteins and for the other one I use bread flour which contains the most amount of protein usually running about 12 to 14 percent and is generally not bleached so you can see here I have two balls of dough each containing a different amount of gluten but you can't actually see that because surrounding that gluten is a whole lot of starch and the next step believe it or not I washed the starch away I placed each dough in a mesh strainer and massage them under running water to wash away all of the starch once the water ran clear a sign that the starch was gone I was left with two piles of essentially pure gluten as you can see the differences in appearance and texture of the two are dramatic the low protein cake flour formed a very small amount of really wheat gluten you can pull it right apart on the other hand high-protein bread flour formed a large ball of highly resilient rubbery gluten and can be stretched very thin without tearing to show just how elastic this bread flour gluten ball is I'm gonna try and do something a little bit crazy I'm gonna treat it like a balloon and inflate it with the air [Music] so what have we learned from this experiment well we use high-protein bread flour for breads because it develops a lot of very flexible gluten which as we've seen acts like a balloon trapping air and creating higher rising loaves now for cakes we want just enough gluten to provide a bit of structure without turning them to huff we turn to cake flour for its lower protein content and reduce gluten potential all-purpose flour as his name suggests is good for a lot of foods that fall in between these extremes such as pie dough harder your muffins and cookies so next time you're kneading pizza dough gently folding a cake batter or considering swapping one type of flour for another we hope you remember this experiment this is one case we're seeing really is believing [Music] you [Music]

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 5,234,013

Rating: 4.8958058 out of 5

Keywords: science, cooking, gluten, starch, flour, experiment, bread, cake, baking, kitchen, cook's illustrated, gf, glutenfree, gluten-free, gluten free, ingredients, test

Id: zDEcvSc2UKA

Length: 3min 24sec (204 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 19 2013

Reddit Comments

[u/tjmiles2]

You shouldn't handle gluten without gloves. It can make your dick fly off.

[u/carolinefelicity]

When the music kicked in, I thought waiting for Josh and Chuck to show up and it go into a Stuff You Should Know episode...

[u/Zakkimatsu]

so my other question: what exactly happens when someone who is gluten intolerant eats gluten on a molecular level?

[u/[deleted]]

what is gluten

Delicious

[u/YourOutdoorGuide]

New task: Make gluten waterballoons and throw them at all my gluten free friends.

[u/josephkebab]

the elasticity is interesting. i always felt like eating certain take away pizzas and oblong sandwiches were like eating an elastic band

[u/hird]

Probably relevant https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oht9AEq1798

[u/konohasaiyajin]

Hell yeah, America's Test Kitchen is the shit. Cook's Country for life! Chris Kimball is the man.

[u/BlueChamp10]

no, gluten will not make your spleen radioactive.