As bemarvin have said…gluten is the building block. If yoou sub it with rice flour for instance, you will not have the proper structure of a baked product that identifies that particular product. I can see it being used in cookies if you want healthy cookies!

You can email me your addy there if you are not comfortable leaving it on this site.

Thanks!

BTW, I LOVE Beatrice’s website. She takes beautiful pictures! I’ve been visiting her site for about 8 months.

Hi Corrine, Calumet is a great easy-to-use product for home baking. When you have the right dosage for the type of cake (for example, pound cake should be different from sponge though the knowledgeable will go scratch through the stronger soda-acid way), the most impact on volume will come from mixing time and technique. In fact, you can compensate to some extent for weak ingredients with right mixing. The best way to learn this is to let an expert show you and then practice ’til you have a feel for when mixing is done rather than to just follow the time given in the recipe.

Gluten is a protein so – unless you have a specific allergy to it – It ought not to be unhealthy to eat it. Its function in bread is to provide the balloon-like cells which gas from yeast fermentation blow up to provide ‘alsa’. It also has a role in the characteristic bite and chewability of bread. So taking it out is a beast of a problem. We have tried to replace the gluten function with different combinations of modified starch and gum while boosting gas production from yeast with baking powder but still got a loaf that is closer to ‘puto’ than bread. Still a lot of work to do.

Is anybody familiar with the flour that Bea of Latartinegourmande uses? Amaranth, quinoa, almond flour. They sound more healthy because they are gluten free?

At the bottom, SAS or Sodium Aluminum Sulfate is banned in Europe because the authorities there suspect that the residual aluminum out of the leavening reaction may, I repeat may, lead to complications towards Alzheimer’s disease. Note, the leavening reaction is:

baking soda + SAS -> 3carbon dioxide + aluminum hydroxide +
2sodium sulfate

Obviously, the US FDA does not agree with this bad effect – at low dosage, etc. – and would have scientific studies to show such. The FDA allows the use of SAS in America with ingredient labeling. This approach is consistently American and democratic and are noticeable with other ingredients.

The European food authorities, on the other hand, generally take a Big Brother approach, briefly, that if an ingredient that is added by human action to food with (1) even just a suspicion of detrimental effect, and (2) there is a feasible substitute (the pyrophosphates), then the Europeans will ban that suspicious substance.

The safety record shows that both approaches are correct and are more determined by what their respective publics value.

I have a personal story to tell here. About ten years ago, the Eqisa salesman from Texas (their biggest SAS mine is in Mexico) tried to sell me SAS on the strength that Calumet (and Kraft – a very reputable firm was using it). In the technical package was a data sheet telling that the health claim against aluminum is false.

Fast forward around five years, Eqisa was bought by Budenheim, the giant German phosphate company producing SAPP, in effect getting control of the global chemical leavening market. Thereafter, the controversy stopped from resonating though the food standard, I believe still stands.

Anyway, I ended up using SAPP in development not because of the safety issue – I had the FDA behind me if I chose SAS – but because SAPP would have provided more flexibility (and cost savings) to my target industrial market. The cost itself was no issue at that time as it was pegged to the relative NV value.

Postscript: my strategy did not work to even dent the leader. Most of us grew up on Calumet and developed our recipes with it. And very few were willing to accept the switching cost of new research to make sure SAPP would not change taste (#!), etc. and affect their business.

MM, I apologize for the length and in adjacent world of industry. You and the rest have moved on and Angela did take time to ask a direct question. Tnx.