Gluten Free Bakery London

What is Gluten? Gluten does not exist by itself. It is a protein that is water-insoluble and that is formed when water is mixed with wheat flour. Keeping technicalities to the minimum, it can be explained as two naturally occurring and dormant proteins in wheat flour come to life when enough water is added to the flour. The two proteins start to interact and form chemical bonds that make them stick with each other… and the gluten is ‘born’. The newly formed gluten protein is very and stretchable.

The more the water-flour dough is mixed, the more chemical bonds are created by the two original proteins and the gluten becomes stronger. This explains why wheat-based dough is stretched and mixed thoroughly to create a strong gluten. In direct contrast, gluten-free dough only needs enough mixing to get the ingredients incorporated and it does need the additional mixing to create gluten. In addition, when doing bread with wheat or other ‘gluten’ flour, it is common practice to allow the dough to rise twice with a view of improving the gluten.

With non-gluten dough, only one rise is needed. Gluten-free flour is usually a mixture of several flours such as chick pea, tapioca, rice… and the list goes on. I do not know of any one single non-gluten flour that can successfully replace wheat flour in a recipe. Therefore, several non-gluten flours are mixed together to provide an appropriate substitute.