What is Gluten?

Gluten is a natural protein, found principally in wheat and barley, extracted  from the crops at the same time as starch.

Wheat gluten is used primarily in the milling & flour industry and in bakery products. The viscoelastic properties of wheat gluten significantly improves dough strength, softness and shelf-life.

It also improves the elasticity and rise of the raw dough in a variety of breads and the crumb and chewiness in the baked loaves. For example, if the flour in bread does not contain enough gluten, the bread collapses, has little volume and its crumb is irregular.

As a plant-based protein, wheat gluten can provide high nutritional values supplementing or partially replacing animal proteins in human nutrition. It is used in meat preparations (including fish, poultry and surimi-based products), pasta and certain cold cuts.

To learn more about the Starch industry's proteins in general, take a look at our leaflet on Plant-Based Proteins