Bread’s tangled web

This silvery, web-like structure is a glob of almost pure gluten, the protein that gives bread its bounce. Surprisingly, it’s not present in wheat flour, and is only created when you start mixing your ingredients to make bread.

“Even though wheat flour is about one-tenth protein, it has no gluten until it is combined with water and mixed into a dough,” says food scientist Dr Stuart Farrimond. “Stirring and kneading causes two smaller proteins, a spaghetti-like glutenin and a meat-ball-shaped gliadin, to coalesce into long, gluten strands.”

As you keep kneading, those gluten strands become longer and stronger. In breads that are leavened with yeast, the gluten network traps carbon dioxide bubbles, which makes the dough rise.

The gluten in this photo was extracted from a dough ball, the starch granules were washed away, and it was magnified 734 times.