Gluten is perhaps the most misunderstood element of the modern diet. It’s been villainised, avoided, and blamed for everything from bloating to broader societal ills – but how much of that scrutiny stands up to closer examination? To help untangle the truth, we turned to Anomarel Ogen, GAIL’s master baker and resident expert in the science of bread, fermentation and flour. His view? Much of what we believe about gluten is either oversimplified or just plain wrong.
“Gluten isn’t even a thing,” Ogen says, straight off the bat. “Not in the way people think it is.” As with carbohydrates, much of the confusion stems from a mismatch between science and perception. Gluten exists, but not until we create it. It’s real, but not stable. It can be broken down, but not in the way people assume. To clear up the picture, we asked Ogen to help us rethink gluten – one misconception at a time.
1. There Is No Gluten in Flour
Let’s start with a seemingly radical idea: flour naturally contains no gluten. “None. Zero. Not until you add water,” says Ogen. What flour does contain are the potential components of gluten – namely, proteins like gliadin and glutenin. When mixed with water, these proteins interact to form a stretchy, elastic network: what we call gluten. It doesn’t exist until that moment of hydration.
There is, however, one exception. “Some mills add gluten to flour in its dry form,” Ogen notes. “In that case – and only that case – you can find gluten already present.” It’s usually added to increase protein content or improve baking performance, and often appears on the ingredients list as “wheat flour, gluten.”
For anyone trying to understand gluten at its source, the key distinction remains: unless it’s been added, gluten isn’t something you find in flour. “You create it.”
2. Fermentation Breaks Gluten Down
Contrary to popular belief, fermentation isn’t just a flavour booster – it’s a biochemical game-changer. In the case of sourdough, fermentation can significantly reduce the presence of gluten in bread. But not for the reason most people assume.
“Acid doesn’t destroy gluten directly. Or at least not on the level of acidity we can reach in sourdough – it can happen at much lower pH rates,” Ogen clarifies. “What it does is activate enzymes that break it apart.” These enzymes – naturally present in flour – become more active in mildly acidic environments, like those created during sourdough fermentation. The result? A breakdown of the gluten matrix over time.
Depending on conditions, a well-fermented sourdough can contain up to 40-60% less gluten than its yeasted counterpart. But timing is key. The baker’s art lies in knowing when to stop: “Too far,” Ogen warns, “and your dough collapses.”
3. Gluten Isn’t One Thing
We often talk about gluten as though it’s a single, measurable entity. It’s not. “Gluten is a composite,” says Ogen, “a macro-polymer made of multiple proteins – with varying baking properties and digestibility.”
Different wheat varieties contain different gluten subunits, which can behave in very different ways. For example, two flours might have the same protein percentage, but the actual composition of those proteins can result in radically different dough performance. Some gluten networks are stronger, some are softer, some are more digestible. Numbers on a flour bag only tell part of the story.
4. Bread Made From Spelt Isn’t Low in Gluten
It’s a persistent myth that spelt is “low gluten” – one that Ogen is keen to dispel. “Spelt often contains more gluten than regular wheat,” he says. What’s different is its composition: spelt’s gluten network tends to be weaker, breaking down more easily during fermentation and baking. That fragility can make it feel easier to digest for some, but it’s not the same as being low in gluten.
This is a classic example of form being mistaken for function. Just because a dough feels different, or is harder to work with, doesn’t mean it contains less gluten. “It’s about how the gluten behaves,” Ogen explains, “not just how much of it there is.”
5. You Can Make Gluten at Home
Want to see gluten for yourself? Try this: mix 100g of white flour with 60g of water, knead into a dough, then slowly rinse it in a bowl of water. The starch will wash away, leaving behind a grey, rubbery mass. That’s gluten – or at least, your homemade version of it.
“It’s a great way to demystify the concept,” Ogen says. “You go from theory to texture – it becomes tangible.” And more importantly, it reveals that gluten isn’t some alien substance lurking in your food. It’s something we create through a very specific process.
7. It’s Not the Gluten – It’s What We’ve Done With It
So why does gluten seem to cause more trouble today than it did in the past? The answer is often falsely blamed on genetic modification of modern wheat – but wheat hasn't been genetically modified, just cross-bred. The real shift lies in how we’ve changed the way we grow, process and bake with it.
Modern industrial baking systems are designed to maximise gluten formation – and in some cases, to go beyond what the flour naturally provides. Mechanical mixers stretch the gluten network to its full potential, and certain improvers are used to enhance that structure further. “Some improvers strengthen the gluten network,” Ogen explains, “though others can do the opposite.”
But the only way to exceed the natural gluten potential of flour is to add more gluten directly – usually in the form of vital wheat gluten (VWG), an industrially extracted protein. “Every time you see gluten listed as an ingredient, that’s what it means,” he says. “I’ve seen bakers add enough VWG to double the native gluten content of the flour.”
At the same time, the longer fermentation processes that once made bread more digestible have been shortened for efficiency and cost. As a result, today’s bread often contains more gluten, assembled more aggressively.
Meanwhile, gluten has crept into processed foods, used as a binder or adhesive in everything from sauces to snacks. In these contexts, it’s rarely fermented or altered, which means the body encounters it in a more intact form – sometimes in its maximum molecular size, which makes it harder to break apart and digest.
And yet, Ogen points out that people in Central Europe and the UK now consume less gluten in bread than they did 200 years ago. “That’s because bread used to make up a much larger part of people’s daily nutrition,” he explains. “But back then, bread was also slower – mixed by hand, fermented over time, baked with patience.”
It’s not the gluten itself that’s changed. It’s everything around it – and everything we’ve done to it.
Gluten, Reimagined
The story of gluten is, like the substance itself, a little sticky. It’s shaped by science, but also by process, culture and perception. With expert insight and a bit of hands-on curiosity, we can move beyond the myths and begin to understand gluten for what it really is – a complex, mutable network of proteins that, when treated with respect, helps make bread not just delicious, but digestible too.
As Ogen puts it: “It’s not about avoidance – it’s about approach. Don’t cut gluten out. Learn about it instead.”
