What the heck is a gluten ball?

Phase 4, Week 1, Day 2

Lecture: Quick Breads
Demo: Muffins and gluten ball.

Today we discussed gluten development in breads and it's importance in most and pastry products. In most cases over mixing batters, quick breads and muffins can produce a though and irregular shaped end result. To demonstrate this we made gluten balls. Basically a dough made from flour and water. Once the dough is formed we worked and squeezed the dough  in buckets (lexons) of water. The water became very cloudy, which was the result of the starch being squeezed from the dough. We changed the water and repeated the steps, until the water became clear. The dough was then cooked off and the result was a hard, tough, rock like bread with huge long holes running through it. These holes are called tunneling. Cool.

Following the gluten balls we learned about various mixing methods; Cut in or biscuit, creaming, and muffin. I'll run down with the muffin method since we made blueberry muffins. The easiest method, the muffin method is used for pancakes, waffles, quick breads, coffee cakes and muffins. This method uses liquid fats and basically adds the liquid ingredients and dry ingredients together and mixes until moist. The batter should be lumpy. You then pan and bake and you're done!

Finally, some breakfast food for breakfast! Unfortunately, the muffins weren't so great. Sadness. At least they looked good.

So, so blueberry muffins