This
blog is for anyone with Coeliac disease or anyone who does not, for
any reason, eat gluten. As part of a school project I will post
recipes and videos of how to cook them, as well as simple tips that
might help you with your dietary needs.
I
have a personal history with Coeliac. Since my sister was a small
child she has been plagued with severe eczema, fatigue and pain when
she eats certain meals. After we suspected she had an allergy or
intolerance of some sort she took a gastroscopy. She was diagnosed
with Coeliac disease so many things had to change. Going out to eat
for dinner when we are on holiday is now almost impossible unless we
are at home or somewhere in Norway. Our kitchen is divided into two
sections: my sister’s ‘Coeliac section’ and the rest of the
kitchen with gluten-containing foods. I don’t like to say ‘normal
food’ because it makes it sound like having Coeliac is some
unknown, foreign illness, which it’s not. I have allergies myself
so we have experienced a lot of allergy exclusion which has been an
unexpected burden. This blog is to help people cope with the
difficulties of having dietary requirements and to offer simple
recipes for families living in Norway.
What
is Coeliac disease?
Coeliac
is an autoimmune disease which inflames the small intestine. The
effectiveness of the villi in your intestine decrease, therefore the
ability to absorb nutrients decreases. About 10% of people with close
relatives who have Coeliac have Coeliac themselves. It is anticipated
that about 1-2% of the Norwegian population have Coeliac (NCF, 2016).
What
is gluten?
Gluten
is made from 2 major proteins: Gliadin and Glutenin. (YouTube, 2010).
When you add water to regular flour, the proteins begin to unfold,
which are originally tangled together and become more long and
stringy molecules. When you knead the flour and water, you rinse out
the starch and eventually end up with a ball of gluten. The proteins
connect together with cross-links When you push the gluten down it
bounces back to its original shape. To make bread rise you need yeast
which forms bubbles of carbon dioxide that rise. When you remove the
gluten, the carbon dioxide would escape from the bread (Thermo Fisher
Scientific, 2015). When the Glutenin and Gliadin bond together with
water they form a network of proteins called gluten which have the
ability to trap air. Bread flour has more proteins and is unbleached
to produce the most amount of gluten possible for the bread to trap
the air and hold its form. For cake flour we only want it to hold its
form and be quite light, so it is generally bleached and has a lower
percentage of proteins (at least 4% less). The gluten in the cake
flour is a lot less sticky and holds it form less. The gluten in
bread flour is a lot more sticky and holds its form a lot more, which
is important for bread (YouTube, 2013).
How
does Coeliac disease affect the body?
The
immune system of someone with Coeliac treats certain parts of the
gluten as an unwanted presence and triggers a response that damages
the small intestine. When this happens over and over again as the
body exposes itself to gluten, the body begins to suffer nutritional
deficiencies because the absorption of the nutrients becomes
disturbed. This is why people with Coeliac have lowered immune
systems, eczema etc. (NHS UK, 2014).
What are the benefits of gluten?
People
without Coeliac disease can benefit from gluten because the grains
that contain gluten (rye, barley, wheat) have been proven to help reduce
the risk of coronary heart disease, diabetes and other illnesses
(Nutrition Facts, 2016). Not only this, they are great sources of
slow-release carbohydrates to give the body energy over the course of
several hours and gives you the feeling of being fuller for longer
(British Dietetic Association, 2016). From previous experience,
gluten free food is notorious for being crumbly and bland. People
buy gluten-including products instead because it tastes so much
better and has a more appealing consistency.
Which
products are best for cooking gluten-free food and how much do they
cost?
The
best company I have found for cooking gluten-free food in Norway is Semper. They
sell a variety of different types of flour such as one for cakes,
bread and pizza and are sold throughout Norway. They cost between 40
and 50 kr in most food shops such as Kiwi, Joker and all of the Coop chains e.g. Coop Extra and Coop Prix (Coop Medlemsservice, 2016), (Kiwi Kundeservice, 2016) and (Joker Servicekontoret, 2016). They are of high quality, compared to
other gluten free flours that are not always (Semper, 2016).
Recipe for a simple gluten-free apple cake!
Ingredients
4 sour apples
2 eggs
150 g sugar
50 g melted butter
150 g gluten free flour
75 ml milk
1 tsp baking powder
2 tsp cinnamon powder
2 tbsp granulated brown sugar
Method
Peel the apples. Remove the core. Cut them into boats and place in cold water
Whisk the egg and sugar to get an airy mixture. Add the butter and milk.
Mix in the flour and baking powder and mix until you get a fine, smooth mixture.
Put the mixture in a cake tin (around 20x25cm) and drizzle half the cinnamon on top.
Drain the apples and lie the boats side by side, slightly overlapping until you have covered the cake.
Drizzle the rest of the cinnamon and granulated brown sugar over the apples.
Bake for 30-35 minutes in the middle of the oven at 220 °C.
Cool the cake prior to cutting.
Experiment
on gluten-extraction
Introduction
I
undertook this experiment to see how much gluten there is in
different types of flour. I was also so interested in the fact that
when people eat bread, they are eating protein as well when they
generally think they are just eating starch, so I extracted the
gluten to see what the protein looked like. I also did it to show
people with gluten intolerance who can tolerate a bit of gluten now
and again which flours have the most and least gluten in them,
however this would not be relevant for someone for coeliac disease.
How
much gluten is there in different types of flour in Norway?
Research
question
How
much gluten is there in 7 different types of flour sold in Norway?
Apparatus
Scales
(closest 2g)
Paper
Pencil
Labels
Bowls
Siktet
hvetemel
(Sifted wheat flour)
Økologisk
siktet hvetemel
(Ecological sifted wheat flour)
Byggmel
(Barley flour)
Pizzamel
(Pizza
flour)
Surdeigsmel
(Sour-dough flour)
Sammalt
grovmalt
(Whole-wheat coarsely ground)
Sammalt
finmalt
(Whole-wheat finely ground)
Cotton
kitchen cloths
Water
Method
The
method I used to extract the gluten is shown on a YouTube video:
Tempefilms's
channel (2010)
How
to extract gluten from flour. [online]
Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nCYhlj5Z1c
[Accessed on 14th June 2016].
For
each type of flour I measured out 100 g and put it into a bowl. Then
I took the pile of flour inside a thin cloth over a bowl in the sink.
I turned the tap on and kneaded the flour inside the cloth until much
of the starch had ran out. I opened up the cloth and scraped out the
sticky flour from the cloth and formed it into my hands. Over a bowl
in the sink I kneaded the dough in my hands and drained more of the
starch from the flour. I continued this process until the remains
began to hang together. I turned off the tap and continued to knead
it, adding some water to it now and then to get rid of any excess
starch until all that was left was the gluten. This entire process
took about 20 minutes for each flour.
Control
variables
Every
type of flour was 100 g in the beginning
Every
type of flour was by the same company, Møllerens
Similar
temperature was used for extracting the starch
Same
type of cloths used
Same
water from the same tap
Air
dried gluten on the same window ledge
Dependant
variables
The
gluten in my experiment was the dependent variable as this was what I
was trying to measure.
Independent
variables
The
different types of flour was my independent variable because that is
what I change to influence the result.
Results
The
results are shown on the table below (Figure 1). The sour-dough
flour (Surdeigsmel)
does not have a precise reading because the most accurate scales at
home measured to the nearest 2 g, the dried gluten that I placed on
the scales was too small to register on the dial. All these results
are just from a single experiment, the results would be more valid if
each flour was tested multiple times.
|
Type
of flour (see Apparatus section for translations)
|
Mass
of dried gluten (g)
|
Percentage
of gluten in flour
|
|
Siktet
hvetemel
|
11
|
11
|
|
Økologisk
siktet hvetemel
|
13
|
13
|
|
Pizzamel
|
12
|
12
|
|
Surdeigsmel
|
Less
than 2
|
<2
|
|
Byggmel
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
|
Sammalt
grovmalt
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
|
Sammalt
finmalt
|
N/A
|
N/A
|
Figure
1:
A table to show the mass of the dried gluten from 8 different types
of flour.
Discussion
These
results in figure 1 are fascinating. It turned out that all of the
heavier, more fibre-full wholemeal flour did not allow me to extract
the gluten using the same process as I used for the other types of
white flour. At first I did not know why this was, but I now think
that this is because of the bran in the flour that makes it a lot
more grainy. As a result the flour does not hold well together. If
you take a small amount of white flour and press it, it sort of stays
compacted together in that position. Whereas if you do this with
wholemeal flour, it does not hold its form as well and breaks apart.
Therefore I think that it is not possible for the gluten to be
extracted from whole wheat flour in this way, and it needs a
different experiment, or the method needs to be modified somehow.
The
sour-dough flour (Surdeigsmel)
does not have a precise reading because the most accurate scales I
could find were measured to the nearest 2 g, and they did not pick up
on the small amount of gluten that I placed on it.
Three
of the flours, ecological sifted white flour (Økologisk
siktet hvetemel),
pizza flour (pizzamel) and Sifted wheat flour (Siktet
hvetemel)
showed similar levels of gluten, ranging from 11 to 13 %. More
experiments need to be done to see if any difference is significant.
It
is interesting to find that the ecological sifted white flour
(Økologisk
siktet hvetemel)
has the highest levels of the protein, gluten. If this is real it
would be interesting to know if it is because of the type of wheat
that is grown or just because of being grown ecologically without
pesticides.
I
was really interested in how the gluten looked. As soon as I had
extracted it it looked just like a greyish-white blob of stretchy
substance that sort of resembled blu tac, but was a lot stretchier.
As it dried it created little pockets of air. It became lighter and
harder as the days passed and after about 2 weeks it had changed to
an off-green colour which looked a bit like a tortoise shell, which
was incredibly fascinating.
Reliability
and improvements
I
could make some improvements to this experiment that would make it
more reliable. I need to repeat the experiment a number of times and
see how close the results are. I could have got some more accurate
scales that were accurate to less than one gram or I could start with
more flour. I could have measured the temperature of the water and
kept it steady throughout the experiment. Nevertheless, for a
home-experiment I think this experiment was successful, however if it
was to be an experiment for a company then there would have to be
improvements such to make it more reliable and more valid.
Conclusion
My
conclusion is that there was more gluten in the ecological sifted
white flour than in the regular sifted white flour, sour-dough flour
and pizza flour, and that there was a lot less gluten in the
sour-dough flour compared to both sifted flours. I can also conclude
that the whiter and more sifted the flour, the more successful the
experiment is. If people have a gluten intolerance or are on a
low-gluten diet, then for savoury products they might try the
sour-dough flour, and for sweet products, they might try the regular
sifted white flour.
References
- Thermo Fisher Scientific (2015) Overview of crosslinking and protein modification. [online] Available at: https://www.thermofisher.com/no/en/home/life-science/protein-biology/protein-biology-learning-center/protein-biology-resource-library/pierce-protein-methods/overview-crosslinking-protein-modification.html [Accessed 23rd June 2016].
- British Dietetic Association (2016) Wholegrains. [online] Available at: https://www.bda.uk.com/foodfacts/wholegrains.pdf [Accessed 11th July 2016].
- Semper (2016) Mixer. [online] Available at: https://semperglutenfritt.se/produkter/Mixer# [Accessed 27th November 2016].
- Coop Medlemsservice (2016) Semper Fin Mix. [online] Electronic Conference, October. Available at: medlemsservice@coop.no [Accessed 10/10/2016].
- Kiwi Kundeservice (2016) Semper Fin Mix. [online] Electronic Conference, October. Available at: Kiwi@reply.socialboard.com [Accessed 11/10/2016].
- Joker Servicekontoret (2016) Semper Fin Mix. [online] Electronic Conference, October. Available at: joker@socialboards.com [Accessed 10/10/2016].
- Tempefilms's channel (2010) How to extract gluten from flour. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nCYhlj5Z1c [Accessed on 14th June 2016].
