Gluten Science

Gluten is the protein network that makes wheat doughs uniquely capable of trapping gas, holding shape, and producing textures from airy bread to chewy pasta to crumbly pastry. It doesn’t pre-exist in flour — it forms when two storage proteins, glutenin and gliadin, hydrate and bond during mixing. Understanding gluten is understanding why wheat dominates world baking, and why every dough-based preparation is fundamentally a strategy for controlling this one variable.