Re: Gluten for oatmeal

Graham <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, 2 Feb 2021 10:55:35 +0000 (GMT), Peter Flynn wrote:
> 
>> Ground oats need gluten to make bread, but how gluten much per
>>  pound of oat flour?
>> 
>> Hard to find with a web search because of the number of sites
>>  telling me that oats are gluten-free.
>> 
>> P
> 
> Why not match the % of bread flour. I.e., try 12-13% of the oat weight.
> I'd be interested to learn of the results of your experiments. Whenever
> I've added a significant quantity of oats to a bread, it has come out with
> the texture of plum pudding:-)

FWIW, I tried making bread with durum wheat flour and 10% "vital wheat
gluten" (quotes as I'm not sure what's _vital_ about the gluten). 

The result was reasonably good. The rise was only slightly taller
than without the gluten, but the bread had a decent blow and was
quite good to eat. The texture improved more than the appearance. 
With no gluten at all the same recipe yielded an edible brick.
Extra water equal to the weight of gluten was added as well, more
might be helpful.

It did have a trace of "sponge rubber" mouthfeel when eaten without
toasting, but under normal circumstances seems perfectly acceptable.
No harm done to flavor.

I too searched for how much gluten to use and found a wide range of
values, from a teaspoon to a tablespoon per cup of flour (or maybe
it was per loaf, sources were often unclear. The 10% figure was picked 
on little more than a whim. I'd guess it's at the upper limit, based
on the finished crumb texture. Unless you're aiming for edible seat
cushions.
 
One added question would be the effect of adding egg in place of
some or all of the gluten. I gather egg proteins play an important
role in pasta, but I'm unclear how/if it'd be relevant to yeast
bread.  

Thanks for reading, and any more ideas.

bob prohaska