November 2, 2011 - 8:21pm
Making High Gluten flour from Bread Flour
It's been bothering me that I can't purchase high gluten flour easily for bagels/pizza dough.
Below are the amounts of vital wheat gluten that are required to create a high gluten flour from both KA Bread flour, and KA AP flour.
** Vital wheat gluten is about 75% protein roughly. **
Bread flour = 12.7% protein x 1000g = 127g protein, we need to add 15g of protein to hit 14.2%, so we use 20g of vital wheat gluten.
AP flour = 11.7% protein x 1000g = 117g protein, we need to add 25g of protein to hit 14.2%, so we use 33.33g of vital wheat gluten.
Hopefully this can be of use to some other bakers.
Share
>>It's been bothering me that I can't purchase high gluten flour easily for bagels/pizza dough.
Why can't you? Where do you live?
Is mail order not an option?
It's not easy to find a supplier in Ontario, Canada that carries high-gluten flour. The shipping costs become prohibitive very quickly. I have heard about Twin Bakery Supply in Buffalo, NY but don't get down that way very often.
I'm relatively close to Dawn Foods in Detroit, but haven't had much luck with them either. I was passed onto a Canadian rep who was willing to sell me Sir Lancelot for roughly $60/bag.
Dawn Foods won't really bother with you over the phone (the phone is manned by salespeople that work on commission, so small orders make them no money); but, if you show up cash in hand at their distribution warehouse and know exactly what you want, they'll take your money and have someone deliver a 50 lb bag of Sir Lancelot right to your car for less than $30 USD.
I've done this many times (will do so today for some Guisto) at several different Dawn Foods warehouses and have never had a problem.
(Also, ask them for their product list. You'd be surprised at the variety of flours some of their locations have in stock.)
Hi,
how do you mix flour and gluten? Do they have to be carefully mixed and sifted several times to distribute gluten evenly and prevent the formation of lumps or is it just enough to stir them together? Where do you buy vital wheat gluten?
You can either mix it right in, or you can sift it together with some flour and then mix it in.
I've purchased Bobs Red Mill vital wheat gluten from Meijer/Walmart in the past, it is pretty expensive though.
I live in a large southeastern US city. VWG can be found in almost every large supermarket(grocery store) here. I imagine most of the large US population centers are similar. As mentioned above, it can be pretty expensive if you do have to buy it at retail price/package. A 6.5 oz(184 gram) package goes for about $2+ in my region.
At some health/natural/bulk food stores, it can be much less expensive in bulk purchases. In bulk, I paid $2.79/lb a couple of years ago. As with most flour prices though, I'm sure it's a little more expensive now.
For those that do choose to use it, only a little is required, so a small amount can last a long time. I have had my last bulk purchase in the freezer for about 2 years.
But as I'm sure will be mentioned, blending it with lower protein flours does not result in exactly the same quality as a true high gluten flour, but it's better than nothing, and it's a little easier to obtain(on a consumer level) than true high gluten flour. Plus, if one has to have it shipped, it's less costly than having to pay shipping for bags of flour.
I would never dare to use gluten, that's not factory packaged, comes from a known brand and clearly labeled as made in this country. Just saying.
You can say that for just about any bulk purchase, of this type, which is not at all, uncommon.
This is from a huge, highly respected international market in my area. However, since I am not trying to sell this stuff to you or anyone else, I will just say, obviously, we are all free to make our own decisions on what products to buy, or not.
But again, to each his own.
Here's a link to the vital wheat gluten page from a bulk supplier I use. The price won't show, but one can get 50 lbs from them for $82.90. Bulk vital wheat gluten is very common. Most health food stores in the US have bulk bins with all kinds of items, such a flours, whole grains, etc.
Thank you.
VWG Blending calculator:
(Link) http://tools.foodsim.com/
Use the "Mixed Mass..." tool on the right, after link.
I use this all the time. It's great.
Thanks Mr Frost, or should I say Jeff Goldblum?
I've been doing some similar math and been adding a little of the wheat gluten when making breads that are lower gluten because of the inclusion of gluten-free ingredients like corn meal or oat flour. We still like a little chewiness, even in our not-totally-white breads and this seems to help. I just moved it from the shelf to the fridge because I saw it was going to take a long time to use at the rate I'm using it.
Nancy Silverton, in the section on flours in Breads from La Brea Bakery, says to add 1 tsp VWG per cup of white flour and 1 1/2 tsp per cup of whole wheat flour to create high-gluten flour.
the previous formula link is no longer.
https://flourmath.bradfordrobertson.com/