SC - four and twenty blackbirds

[Philip & Susan Troy]

Heitman wrote:
> 
> At 08:36 AM 3/3/99 -0600, you wrote:
> >The baking has probably coagulated the gluten, so your flour is no good for
> >leavened bread.   It will certainly work as a thickener
> >Bear
> 
> UM,   what makes flour work as a thickener is the gluten strands breaking
> and reforming into longer strings. So.... if the gluten has already
> coagulated, how is it then going to be effective as a thickening agent?
> 
> As I said before, you can test its gluten properties easily by making a
> small batch of roux blanc. if it works, then the gluten is still effective,
> and the flour can be used as you would have before. If it doesn't, then as
> a dusting powder is a great idea.

Forgive me; I hate to jump in and contradict people for no reason.

Flour works as a thickener because starch granules gelatinize in the
presence of heat and water: they expand in proportion to the water
absorbed and also, as I recall, repel each other electrostatically. As
your sauce simmers, the proteins in the flour float to the top and are
skimmed off. Now, if you boil _dough_ in liquid, the gluten has already
been developed and it's going to be in the sauce unless you remove it.
The whole idea of adding a fat to roux is to make certain this doesn't
happen. If it _were_ gluten that thickened flour-thickened sauces, then
wheat starch wouldn't work for the purpose; it does. Harold McGee has an
entire chapter on this in "On Food and Cooking".

Now, I don't know whether roasted flour (or the glutein and glutenin
therein) is affected in its capacity to form gluten strands by the heat
of cooking, but no gluten per se should be developed: there is little
moisture and no kneading involved in what Cindy did.

My apologies if extreme haste has made me seem rude. That isn't my
intention at all.
 
Adamantius
- -- 
Phil & Susan Troy

troy at asan.com
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