[Sca-cooks] Different flours, was Cookie Exchange

[Terry Decker]

The term glutinous rice does not mean that the rice contains gluten.  It
means that the rice is gluey or glue-like, in other words, sticky.  This is
usually because of high level starch in the grain.

Glutenous means that the subject has gluten proteins and under the proper
conditions will form strands of gluten.

For baking bread, gluten is fine, the higher the percentage of gluten the
better.  For baking cookies or cakes, the less gluten the better, because
the strands of gluten will make the final product tough.  This is why bakers
choose hard flours for bread and soft flours for pastries.

Bear

>
> --- kingstaste at mindspring.com wrote:
>
> > 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??
>
> William de Grandfort