[Sca-cooks] Different flours

[Stephen Bloch]

>  > The rice flour also doesn't produce the gluten which makes the long protein
>>  strands that help with cohesion.
>
>Yeah, that explains the fragility of your cookie.  Rice does not 
>have gluten, which is pretty much
>essential for making a decent cookie/cake/etc.  Not too much gluten 
>development, but enough to
>give the item a little body, and bind the ingredients together.
>
>There is glutinous rice, but I have never seen that commercially 
>milled into flour.  Perhaps it
>could be done at home??

Yes, glutinous rice flour is available commercially; I used to 
routinely add a little into my bread dough.  Even glutinous rice 
doesn't have as much gluten as hard wheat; I felt that it made the 
bread somewhat moister and more fine-grained, so I could cut it 
thinner.  I've most often found the Japanese kind, in a white 
cardboard box of about a pound labelled "Mochigome", at ordinary 
grocery stores (albeit in large, multi-ethnic cities like San Diego 
and New York).

In the past year and a half, I've been making low-carb bread, so the 
rice flour is out, and I'm using vast quantities of wheat gluten. 
(Many bread recipes suggest adding a few tablespoons to lighten a 
whole-grain bread recipe; I use a few cups, in addition to smaller 
amounts of several other flours.  It's 80% protein, almost no carbs.)
-- 
                                     John Elys
          (the artist formerly known as mar-Joshua ibn-Eleazar ha-Shalib)
                                 mka Stephen Bloch
                                 sbloch at adelphi.edu