[Sca-cooks] Re: Different flours, was Cookie Exchange

[Terry Decker]

Actually, if you overknead the dough, the gluten begins to break down making
the dough less able to retain carbon dioxide which in turn makes the loaves
denser.

Bear

>       There will probably be about 50 other folks jumping in, but at the
risk of duplicating, I don't believe that rice flour has any gluten in it;
gluten being the substance that makes kneaded wheat doughs "springy" and
elastic.  It acts as a binder to give wheat baked products their coherence
(and, if overkneaded, toughness, since the strength of the gluten increases
the more it's "worked").  I believe rye has gluten too, but I don't think
corn or barley do.
>
>
>               -- Ruth