Obtaining pure gluten from wheat flour

Warn­ing! Only un­der adult su­per­vi­sion.

Equip­ment

• wheat flour (3.5 oz);
• wa­ter (5 tbsp).

Step-by-step in­struc­tions

Mix wheat flour with wa­ter thor­ough­ly and let the mix­ture sit for 2 hours. Rinse the re­sult­ing dough un­til the wa­ter runs clear. This makes a yel­low­ish, elas­tic mass.

Process de­scrip­tion

Your Thanks­giv­ing menu may in­clude a lot of flour-based items. What, apart from car­bo­hy­drates, does flour con­sist of? Flour is most­ly starch by mass. To re­move it, you’ll need a lot of wa­ter – a thor­ough rins­ing will al­most com­plete­ly re­move the starch from the dough, leav­ing only an elas­tic yel­low­ish mass al­most en­tire­ly con­sist­ing of gluten. Gluten is a mix­ture of glutenin and gliadin pro­teins, which serve as a source of amino acids for the germ in­side grains of wheat, rye, and bar­ley. Oth­er grains such as rice and corn are gluten-free. It is not un­com­mon for peo­ple to have a ge­net­ic pre­dis­po­si­tion to gluten in­tol­er­ance. In this case, gluten can in­ter­fere with the abil­i­ty of the in­testines to ab­sorb nu­tri­ents, cause thin­ning of the mu­cous mem­brane of the small in­tes­tine, and lead to in­flam­ma­to­ry skin dis­eases. Through­out their lives, peo­ple who ex­pe­ri­ence gluten in­tol­er­ance must strict­ly ad­here to a gluten-free diet. Symp­toms of gluten in­tol­er­ance of­ten co­in­cide with those of ir­ri­ta­ble bow­el syn­drome. A doc­tor’s con­sul­ta­tion is nec­es­sary to dis­tin­guish be­tween these two ail­ments. When self-di­ag­nos­ing, peo­ple of­ten make mis­takes and elim­i­nate gluten when not med­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary. Any­way, this is no rea­son not to cook a Thanks­giv­ing tur­key!

Even more sci­en­tif­ic ex­per­i­ments for a hap­py Thanks­giv­ing await you in the MEL Sci­ence sub­scrip­tion!