Raj V wrote:

> Under what conditions would one use "Vital Wheat Gluten" in a bread recipe?
> I haven't looked at bunches of recipes, but I've never seen one that used
> this ingredient.
>
> TIA
> Raj
>
>

Another name for vital wheat gluten is "gluten flour." It is important
to understand that this is different from "high-gluten flour." The
latter is bread flour with a high protein content of the right sort to
produce more gluten than typical bread flours when it is made up into a
dough. Gluten flour, or vital wheat gluten, is an additive used in small
quantities.

Gluten flour is made by mixing flour with water to make a dough and then
washing away the starch and drying and grinding what's left. There is
also a more modern process that accomplishes the same thing.

Gluten flour is added to doughs to give the baked goods more volume and
a lighter texture. For example, if you want to make a commercial whole
wheat bread (nominally made with 100% whole wheat flour) and have it be
as light and fluffy as Wonder Bread, you are allowed to add up to 2%
gluten flour. Another place it is used is in Kaiser Rolls (the real New
York ones, not the star-imprinted soft rolls that you see in most of the
country). These have a fragile, flaky crust and an airy crumb.

A lot of amateur bakers try to compensate for their difficulty in
properly developing the gluten in a dough by adding some vital wheat
gluten (gluten flour). Mostly, this is a cop-out. It's preferable to
learn better technique, instead. However, you do sometimes see recipes
for heavy multi-grain breads that call for a little gluten flour to help
compensate for all the non-gluten-forming flours that are used. This
undeniably helps the dough hold together and makes for a somewhat
lighter, tastier bread.