A distributor recently wrote asking us for a spec sheet listing the gluten percentage of one of our flours. The request was reasonable but the premise was not.
Flour does not contain gluten. It contains two proteins, gliadin and glutenin, and in a dry sack, they sit there doing nothing at all. Add water and work the dough, and those proteins hydrate and link into a continuous elastic network. That network is gluten. Gliadin lets it flow and stretch and glutenin gives the dough its spring, and the balance between the two is what a baker or pizzaiolo feels when the dough ball opens easily or fights back.
Even the international standard that defines gluten describes it in its hydrated form, which means water is part of the definition and a gluten percentage would not describe our flour but someone’s dough, made at a hydration we did not choose, in a mixer we do not own, for a time we did not set. The same flour would give you a different number in your bakery than in ours.
We can tell you however what the flour brings to that dough, and our sheets say it in five lines.
- Proteinis the raw material, the potential for that network to form.
- Falling numberdescribes enzyme activity, which governs how the starch behaves through fermentation and bake.
- Farinograph absorptiontells you how much water the flour will take.
- Stabilitytells you how long the dough tolerates mixing before it gives up.
- The alveograph Wthe number most American buyers have learned to ask for, describes strength, though not as accurately as you would think.
In fact, our own technical sheet says something most people never read: the alveographic values are reported for commercial purposes, and the reference for strength and extensibility is the extensographic test. We publish both but the industry quotes the first and ignores the second.
The sheet ends with a line that explains why any single number is a poor way to buy flour. Wheat and flours are live raw materials, subject over time to natural changes that modify their rheological characteristics, and we calibrate blends continuously to hold performance steady at the moment you use them, which is the promise behind our tagline: The Constant Behind Your Talent.
This is why two flours with the same protein content can behave nothing alike. So when you ask us for a gluten percentage, we will send the full sheet and then ask what you are making and what process you are running, because a pizzaiolo holding a 72-hour cold ferment and a pastry chef laminating croissant dough need opposite behaviors from the same protein.
Protein is what we mill.
Gluten is what you make.