High-gluten flour

Most flour world-wide has a considerably reduced gluten content since millers learned they could extract half the gluten and sell it on the side and no one would notice. No one, that is, besides bakers of thick, highly glutinous doughs (pizza, bagels, etc). I happen to need to prepare such glutinous dough and would prefer not to have to show up at a bakery at 4:00 a.m. with a begging bowl and a wad of cash.

Rosenmehl makes a Wiener Griessler Type 405 which is much better than the standard Type 405 flour (although some 50% more expensive) and it makes a nice dense dough, but it's still too light and airy, even after extended kneading (dough hook and hand) and a harsh punchdown. Does anyone know where to find full- or high-gluten flour in a retail store?

woof.

type 550 is what I usually use for higher gluten content. Rosenmehl also happens to be my brand of choice, although I haven't really experimented with other brands. This is what I usually make my pizza crust with and I get fairly good results. It was a marked improvement from the Rosenmehl 405 that I used to use.

Edit: I should have actually Keydecked you!

I've definitely seen "high gluten flour" in larger Asian shops, but I unfortunately don't know whether it was rice flour. Worth a look, perhaps. Actually, now that I think about it, I've also seen regular cake flour there. Most definitely.

It was definetely not rice flour, as rice doesn't contain gluten.

Ah. I thought it did, for making rice noodles.

Yeah, same same. Was told this by an owner of a bakery as well, so seems like this is the way to go.

I now have some 550 and will test it in an hour or so. Right now I have to cook cod with ginger-brown sugar carrots and linguini with butter and parsley. Then it's back to baking.

woof.

you lighted my interest again and I tried making bagels this morning using a combination of recipes I found online and the 550 flour. The last time I did this the results were less than desirable, however I was using the 405. This time the bagels came out beautifully and I'm thrilled that I can now make myself bagels on demand. I think the gf was a bit shocked to find that I keep malt extract hidden in the fridge, but then again she still hasn't found the hops.

Somebody on a different thread mentioned leaving them overnight in a salt solution so I saved two bagels and am leaving them overnight in the fridge in salty water just for fun and will see how they come out tomorrow morning. Thanks for resparking my bagel interest.

Sharing is caring .

Aurora also makes a 550 flour called Backstark that they recommend for yeast breads. I've had really good results with it.

Well basically what I really wanted was to use malt as my only source of sugar. Both in the boil and the dough itself.

What I did:

The Dough:
~4 1/2 cups flour
2 maybe 3 teaspoons of salt
a liberal sprinkle of oil (corn)

1 1/2 cups really hot water
2 big spoons of malt extract
yeast

combined the water with the malt when it was very hot so that the malt would go into solution. Then I combined the flour, salt and oil. When the water was cool enough I added the yeast and let it have some fun for a couple of minutes while I made a pot of tea and cleaned a little. I then I gradually added the water to the dry ingredients and stirred until I had a dough. I took task to the dough for slightly over ten minutes keeping the surface well floured. Left it to sit for about twenty minutes while I got the water started on the boil with malt extract and salt. Cut the dough out into eight pieces and rolled them out trying to get them about a half inch thick and then looped them around and let them sit while I cleaned the kitchen and got the oven going with the pizza stone at the same temperature I do my pizza which is somewhere b/w 200 and 250 which I think is slightly less than 230. When the water was boiling nicely I dropped the bagels in one at a time making sure they didn't stick to the bottom of the pot and flipped them once, taking them out after I counted forty seconds (most online recipes claim forty five seconds on either side with simmering water) I took them out with a slotted spoon and let them drip for a couple of seconds before putting them on a baking tray with backpapier. I let them sit for a couple of minutes then put them in the oven (Stone was hot) baked them for about twenty minutes. I pulled them out and turned them about three minutes before the end of the bake.

Edit: Next time I would put in a bit more salt and maybe a touch less malt.

Cheers, maybe I'll try it on the weekend.

I'll let you know how the ones in the salt bath turn out I'm going to try them for breakfast tomorrow.

There's always the Italian "Tipo 00", typically used for pizza and pasta doughs. It can be found at most Italian food shops, such as Feinkost Spina ( http://www.spina.de/ ) if you live in Munich or Dresden.
Happy baking!

Thanks for the suggestions. I gave up and started testing many different combinations and procedures over the past week. What I came up with is substituting approximately 1/8 to one 1/4 cup of Griessler for every cup of type 550. The problem: Germans want flour measured by weight, not volume. Type 550 weights about 170g/cup; Griessler is only about 160g/cup. Not a huge difference but noticeable if you bake in large batches.

The problem is that even inside Europe, different countries handle and notate their flour in different ways, all based on the "ash" content of the flour (and they also can't agree on which method to emply to measure this nor whether the designation should be in per-mill [Germany], percent [France] or codified[Italy]). The French 65 is similar to the German 550 but not the same, and there are likewise differences between those and Italian types. The biggest problem for me (and it was a problem in the US when trying to make German breads) is that none of these classifications has to do with the "strength" of the flour which is how US flours are typed. The only exception I've found is that the Griessler is almost exactly the same as US pastry flour, though a bit higher in gluten.

Anyway, that's my recommendation. It's working very well for American bread recipes. YMMV.

woof.

Gluten is called Weizenkleber or Klebereiweiß in German, available (among other sources) here (500 g € 2,59) ... best results are achieved by adding 20 g Gluten to 480 g Mehl Typ 550

The damned millers shouldn't be pulling the gluten out in the first place.

woof.

Isn't the millers excuse that cake and pastry dough should have a lower gluten content? One not so fun way of dealing with the lower gluten content is beating the shit out of the dough while you knead it.

You're in Germany, you might try to pass a law verbotenning that.

Some fact to note before this turns into a rant against millers: It is a quirk of US variants of wheat to have far above average gluten content. So European flour might not have had any gluten removed at all, it simply is that way.