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Mastering the Art of Gluten-Free Baking
Today, we are diving into the world of gluten-free baking with expert baker Mark Floerke. In this insightful discussion, Mark shares valuable tips and techniques for creating delicious gluten-free baked goods. Whether you are a seasoned baker or just starting out, the information provided in this video is sure to enhance your understanding of gluten-free baking.
Mark’s expertise shines through as he discusses the intricacies of gluten-free formulation, offering practical advice for achieving the perfect texture and flavor in your baked creations. From ingredients to techniques, this video covers all aspects of gluten-free baking, making it a must-watch for anyone looking to expand their baking skills.
Whisking Away Gluten: Mastering the Art of Gluten-Free Baking
hello Bakers my name is Mark fura and I’m the baked and science podcast host for bakerpedia and this is your Wiz wiom Wednesday Today I wanted to talk to you a little bit about glutenfree and so to do that first I think we need to start off with gluten now gluten is a substance that is made.
Up of two proteins and these proteins are called glutenin and gliadin and combined they form a kind of chewy elastic stretchable resilient Network that makes these scrumptious things that we call bread for example right and it’s also of course used in cakes and muffins and things like that too and quants and.
Danishes and all these lovely things it’s what gives it texture and structure um glutenin and gliadin are proteins proteins are made up of amino acids our body needs amino acids to be able to turn them into other amino acids or other proteins really to form muscles and organs and renew your skin and all these things right so they’re very.
Important to us however gluten represents a challenge for a lot of people it is not a complete protein in other words it doesn’t contain all of the amino acids necessary as uh building blocks for our body so it’s a little bit difficult to digest uh we can actually only digest about you know 40% of it so to speak right um it’s got what we call.
A digestibility score of 0.4 um whereas things like egg white now that is really good healthy protein that has a Digest estable score of one we can digest 100% of it it’s got all the necessary amino acids so that’s kind of where we start from a little bit so as I’ve mentioned gluten which is formed from the two proteins glutenin and.
Gliadin can be difficult to digest for some people so we have a lot of people who are gluten intolerant that is that they have difficulty digesting it they get upset stomach and or you know all kinds of other things perhaps associated with it then on the the very uh tip of the spear is celiacs disease celiacs disease is an.
Autoimmune disease where when the body encounters gluten in the gut primarily it essentially starts attacking itself um is a Layman’s way of putting it so it is very painful and discomforting and um very difficult for a Celiac to also then get good nutrition and and digestion um and then there’s well as I mentioned there is gluten intolerant and.
Then there are people who are allergic to gluten which is completely different altogether so we really have three different categories a autoimmune disease digestion discomfort and we have allergens right now the allergen is not severe generally speaking uh such as uh peanut allergies where anaphylaxis can uh happen but uh people who are allergic.
To gluten can break out in hives um they you know they get red spots everywhere and things and uh gets itchy and all that stuff and and maybe other symptoms right associated with a histamine response which is what an allergy is so having set up now what gluten is and why we might want to consider gluten-free is brings us to all of the opportunities.
That are available so gluten-free baking is a very important growing category it is worth close to $13 billion in the United States these days and it is pois to grow over 10% in the next 8 years so there’s a lot lot of opportunity for gluten-free still it grew tremendously in the early years uh as celiac disease was becoming more well known and people.
Started discovering gluten intolerance and then of course various other books that came out talking about this so there’s there’s on a commercial level there are enormous opportunities for gluten-free now where are you going to find out information about all this stuff to try baking gluten-free well of course there’s lots of things on the.
Internet right and uh if it’s on the internet it must be true right um well we know that can be a struggle sometimes but we can assure you when you come to the bakerpedia website you can always find sound vetted information and we have a brand new pocketbook or pocket guide I should say um All About gluten-free and it even has.
Sample formulas for gluten-free bread gluten-free cookies gluten-free cake and so you can get a lot of help there from downloading the pocket guide just go to Baker pedia.com and you click on um the the F the first drop- down menu on the left hand side and and select pocket guide and uh there you go um as I always like to say Bob’s your uncle right um.
And so uh working with gluten free products is can be quite a challenge right so first of all ensuring that the ingredients are glutenfree especially if you want to sell to celiacs they are very very sensitive to gluten so to for something to be glutenfree for someone who suffers from celiac disease it must be less than 20 parts per.
Million so that’s very very little um how can I put this into if you took 20 G of gluten in a million G of flour so imagine that a million gam of flour that would be 1,000 kilos so in other words only 20 G of gluten per metric ton that is in other words if you imagine a ton a long.
Ton of flour you would have to have less than a tablespoon of gluten in there so it’s very very little right if you imagine spreading that out now if you turn that into a pound of flour it’s like it’s a little bit right um and it’s very hard to get everything clean if once you’ve had gluten in a facility because it’s it’s everywhere it’s in the.
Air it’s in the dust it’s everything so it’s very you have to be very diligent when you’re making things truly GL gluten-free uh and then of course you have to vet all of your ingredients that are coming in that they are certified gluten-free so that you don’t bring in cross-contamination uh when you’re in a gluten-free.
Facility um and of course formulating is then the other interesting challenge now just replacing wheat flour with arches is what often the uh those who are uninitiated think is the simple answer unfortunately it’s not that simple uh because the gluten protein as small as that is it’s only usually somewhere between 10 and 12% most of the time of.
The flow um it has a huge function uh because really when you make a dough the only thing that’s really absorbing water is gluten the rest the starch is just has water attached to it on it going kind of for a little ride and then when it heats up in the oven it opens up and absorbs the water and locks things in place right um so starches are.
Definitely a big part of gluten-free but now you need to replace some of that elasticity and resilience and stretchability and all these kind of stuff so egg whites can help with that hydrocol can help with that um you know various hydroc cholid is very various types of gums and and fibers and things like that and so there’s there’s.
Different things um some of the great gluten-free flowers for example Chia flour and sorghum flour they have some slight gluten like properties in that they they provide you a little bit of that that resilience that that especially in things like muffins and cakes they work really really well right um and there again we have pointers on.
This in the pocket guide in our gluten-free pocket guide on Baker pedia and um so you know the other thing is where it gets really challenging is if you’re trying to do multiple interests Beyond gluten-free if you’re trying to do gluten-free and vegan that becomes an extreme Challenge and the best thing I would suggest is call us right because.
That’s not something you’re going to figure out on your own not in any unless you got like really a few years to to work on something uh because it’s extremely challenging to replace things anything that comes from an animal uh that might help you and so you can’t just simply do it all with hydrocol sites it uh it’s not quite as cot and.
Dry as that as we say right um and so there are lots of opportunities for gluten-free we have a gluten-free seminar coming up in the near future as well and uh do check out our gluten-free pocket guide my name is Mark fura I’m the baked and SS podcast host for bakerpedia and this has been your wisdom Wednesday.
