No taste test?!? That is always my favorite part! Thanks Sune for the great content!

Did you notice a difference in the chew/texture when eating?

75% hydration for 9.6g flour sounds really extreme :) When I bake with only supermarket 10.4g flour (quite rarely though) I lower the hydration to 66%. But our all-purpose flour is much more white (which means it takes less water). And I don't use baskets for final proofing, just free-standing loafs, it is a much more demanding to loaf's strength :)

This vital wheat gluten calculator is so handy!I have been using it because my flour has lower protein content, and I just realised I should use another 2 grams per bread! These experiments are great, thank you!

Love the style, the music and the intention behind the experiments.

First of all, I want to thank you, Sune. You rock! I have learned a lot from you, and I watch out for your weekly videos. I've been looking forward to your VWG experiments because I use quite a bit of it in my baking. I live in a very remote area where it is hard to buy good flour. So, I mill all of my own grains. The downside of that is that when using strictly whole grain, it is hard to get the best gluten development. I don't sift the bran out and then add it back in as some others have recommended. But I have gotten some great results through longer autolyse and using VWG. For example, my go-to mix of flours is 60% hard white winter wheat at 13% protein, 20% hard red spring wheat at 13% protein, and 20% dark rye. I use 50-50 rye and hard white wheat starter at 100% hydration. The inoculation is 20%. Total hydration is 80% and salt at 2%. I calculate the VWG at 5% of the total flour used to make up my formula. If I wasn't using freshly milled hard white winter wheat, at 13%, commercial flour at the same protein content would work fine. But if I want to maintain the integrity and flavor of the whole grain, then the gluten strength can be problematic. To combat that, I autolyse the dough in the refrigerator 8-12 hours, which softens the bran particles and makes a big difference in getting the maximum gluten development. That and VWG has worked for me. I still get the incredible flavor from the fresh milled whole grains, with a nice open hole crumb. Perhaps you could experiment with using only fresh milled grain and using VWG to help with that. You also might want to experiment with fresh-milled whole grain and extended autolyse. Sometimes I feel like a doomsday prepper with all of my buckets of grains stacked in my kitchen, but the flavor of the bread I produce is off the charts. Looking forward to your future--experiment times!

Would have loved for you to do a more extreme variations. Say normal, + 5g, +10g, & +20g to really see the differences.

For some, it's never enough ... as far as I'm concerned, all your experiments teach me a lot! A thousand times thank you and above all, please continue, I love and love how you explain! Manu from Belgium.

Wow! The difference in ove-spring is AMAZING!

Your "this one doesn't look great" still looks better than 90% of my breads. They all looked good to me. Wish my failures looked that great. How was the taste? You didn't do the taste test at the end?

The best part is the crunch when you cut into it!! I thought my 11-12% protein flour was not sufficient, but apparently it should be. Will still experiment with a little added gluten soon.

I’ve only used all purpose flour since starting my sourdough journey. I’ve been using your vital wheat gluten calculator from your website Sune. It’s been a life saver!

Next up: baking bread with pure 76% gluten vital wheat gluten flour.

VWG is probably the answer i've been looking for. I have had successful sourdoughs that turned out beautifully with massive oven spring but it was always hit or miss. I prefer high hydration and I had never taken protein content into consideration. What likely happened is with my successful ones in my experiments is that i probably used the just the right amount of water in my flour to match it's protein content. I'm hoping that this will allow me to achieve more consistent oven spring with stronger doughs, while I adjust the water levels accordingly.

Hey Sune, I have a real baking challenge for you. I stumbled upon an Ancient Egyptian sourdough bread called "Sun bread". It's been baked the same way in Egypt, using the same method for thousands of years. The bread uses a levain, autolyse, and an Egyptian tangzhong called asseeda. They put it in the sun instead of the fridge. They score it like the pharaohs used to score their bread, and bake it in clay oven. I've tried to make this bread many times without any success. It's difficult to get an English translation as all the YT videos seem to be in Egyptian only. If you manage to bake this bread, I'll put you on a pedestal and declare you the "King of all Breads". Cheers, Diana

I learned from a lecture (the owner of Bagel Hole, Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY) that professional-traditional bagel makers use a higher protein flour . Between 15%-17%. I have tried, it with success, by adding gluten to my normal 12.5% bread flour. Old style NY bagels are denser, with a stronger chew than many modern bagels (and smaller). I have not heard of other bread types that use this level of gluten flour.

after years of making tasteless fast-acting yeast bread, I made my first real sourdough loaf today after watching your videos and now I'm hooked. Thank you

An important video, due to the problems getting flour during lockdown. Well done.

Definitely learned something today! I struggle with the flatness of my breads. Mine looks just like the first one... Now I know it's cuz I'm using a 10g protein flour and how I can improve that.

Since I can’t get bread flour during our pandemic shut down, I’ve been adding gluten to ap flour. I’m glad you did this video because I’ve been inconsistent with how much I add. I shall now correct that.

You know I think I'm going to start playing that jazzy music in your background whenever I'm making bread. I notice I always feel much more relaxed when watching you make bread with that great music going, than I do when actually making my own in my tiny apartment kitchen. (It's still worth it though!)

Sune, you are simply incapable of baking a bad loaf! We ordinary mortals would be overjoyed to be able to take even your less sprung loaves from our own ovens! Thanks for doing this demo. I have been adding vital gluten to flour a lot since covid started, and home breadmaking became very popular here in the States. This has meant that it's not always possible to buy my preferred, high gluten flour brand.

I baked first time with Vital and added 4 times more of Vital than needed (about 40 grams). The dough was dense, but the bread had great oven rise but crumb was dense like sandwich bread. Tasted great. It was difficult work the dough

Great stuff, Sune! I do something similar sometimes; I have a super high gluten bread flour (I suppose it's distinct to this VWG, but not sure by how much) which is great for spiking the reasonably lower protein flours I mostly can find here (Toronto). Works a treat even on flours that traditionally suck at gluten development (barley, rye, and kamut, in my personal experience). BUT! Add too much, and it definitely alters the flavour of the breads, and probably not for the better. So it's a trade-off/give and take thing.

Very interesting experiment. But anyone else wondering why the 10.6 turned out better than the 11.6 and 12.6? It seems to me the oven spring looks best on the 10.6

I’m out of bread flour and my beloved husband forgot to buy it (I didn’t kill him). I tend to bake daily . That’s why I’m watching this. I have tons of AP flour and vital wheat gluten.

AWESOME!!!

Ha! I am in the middle of doing the same experiment. I made three breads, one with AP flour (11.7% protein), one with AP flour boosted to 12.7% protein with vital wheat gluten, and the final bread with 12.7% protein bread flour. All were 80% hydration, 20% inoculation with my homemade starter. Looks like my results will be very similar to Sune's.

I bought an artisanal stone milled flour and had similar issues to your control bread. Decreased the hydration and it went great. Glad to learn about another option. Thanks !!

Been doing this for months as I learned to make SD. All purpose bleached white flour was all I could get a few months ago and after trying without the gluten and baking bricks, I added 20g of gluten to my 500g loaves and had magical results! My sourdough was transformed! I’m just finishing that 25lb bag of flour, and just know I’ll be back at experiment time trying to get my loaves to proof well and get good oven spring once I start using my new organic I bleached flour with a higher protein %. Thanks for all you’ve taught me on this 4 month adventure!

Good info. Also, REALLY like that Gretsch White Falcon in the back. Sweet guitar with sweet tone.

Great experiment and just what I needed to see as I contemplate buying vital wheat gluten as bread flour is hard to get here.......thanks again my brother!

Thank you for this.. after having baked sd for over a year, ive decided to start adding vwg, fingers crossed.. your protein calculator is really cool!

Very informative. I just started using V.W.G. Because high protein flour here is 3-4 times the cost over all purpose flour. (I'm cheap) It seens to be work well.

Love this guy's videos so much.

Great experiment! Thank you. What would be equally interesting is to see how could you use extra gluten for longer fermentation times which would further decompose antinutrients and make even richer taste. I am really a fan of more complete fermentation times, even if it means flatter bread and denser crumb.

I find it easier to add gluten to the whole bag of flour. For example, a kilo of flour with 50 g. of vital wheat gluten added added will raise the protein content by 3.5%. This formula can be easily adjusted for your desired percentage. As the Geek has noted, stronger dough will be easier to work with, and I concur.

Last week I tried the same thing, adding 2 tsp of wheat gluten in 600g all purpose flour (9% protein)., 65% hydration, 15% active starter... got the best round loaf in my 6 months of attempting to make the perfect loaf. To see if it was just luck, yesterday I made the same recipe and when it came out of the oven this morning it was just as beautiful.. all my efforts with high protein bread flour resembled pancakes...

Thank you so much. The highest protein I have found is 11 percent and it is not a organic flour. I prefer organic and that is about a 9.5 percent. The vital wheat gluten I believe will fix the problems I am having with my bread. The Calculator is a complete lifesaver!

What if you add gluten in a a 100% rye flour? or in a no gluten flour?

This rocks. Exactly what I was looking for! Love your content always.

Wow, you can get Bob's Red Mill in Denmark.

I'm not sure what to make of this. If you watch some of "JoyRideCoffee's" videos on his channel he makes some amazing low protein breads that weren't flat and had the most amazing crumb. I usually use high protein flour but with 20% flours with lower protein for example Rye. So the effective protein is lower. I haven't tried one with just supermarket white flour - so I'll have to try it for fun.

Great video, Sune. I’m new to all this. Today, I tried modifying my regular whole wheat recipe, adding rye in place of some of the wheat flour. Ended up with a very sticky dough, that broke during even gentle stretch-and-folds. I ended up with very flat bread. I don’t know why, but I do know that these recipes are really formulas that I change at my peril! Better to just find a sourdough rye recipe an expert has tested.

Thank You. I live an hour away from King Arthur Flour in Vermont. I have been using their Special Patent Bread Flour with excellent results but it’s good to know that I can use weaker flours by substituting Vital Wheat Gluten.

Did you try tasting the breads? I find that when I use more than about 5% vital wheat gluten the crumb becomes quite gummy and less pleasant. Also, it would have helped if you had measured the height of the loaves. There wasn't as much visual difference as I would have expected.

Very nice experiment! This shows that with any weak flour you can make bread. However, you need to reduce hydration for such type of flour and increase it when protein % is higher. However, there are "weak" flours with very good gluten quality and viceversa. Every flour is different and unique.

Hello, is there a maximum for the protein content? The more the better up to what percent? Thanks!

Thanks! I'm loving your videos! It's time for more sourdough blues

Just wanted to say that it's called a "fermentolyse". You probably know, but wanted to put it out there. :D - Love your vids!

no triplicates no robust conclusions!

Interesting. I have a container of gluten that I got when I couldn't find bread flour. It appears to have a good use. Thanks for this experiment.

Thanks for this experiment!👍

I would love to see a whole grain spelt flour loaf baked with suggested amounts of plain flour and hydration please

Can you try an experiment with sparkling water? Some people get a better crumb!

If you used milk instead of water, would that add enough protein to the dough?

I think I would like 9 and 12 best, do to the better looking crumb

Sune, please get a bowl scraper and scrape those bits back into your dough, please :)

I would love to see an experiment about using different types of additives for visual reasons. I’ve been finding adding straight up bran gives my loaf a darker and more interesting tangy flavor with the added benefit of higher hydration (70% white flour, 20% bran, 10% whole wheat flour at 87% hydration).

Test what happens when you skip autolyse / stretch and folds and mix everything together in a stand mixer vs normal process?

What would happen if you go even higher with Gluten? Bread flour PLUS gluten.

If vital wheat gluten is made by washing the startch from the gluten, then powdered. Couldn't one just wash a low protein dough, remove some startch, and be left with a relatively higher protein concentration in the remaining dough. Granted that may not be as easy to do in a controlled manner, but perhaps in the case where one does not have ready access to commercially produced VWG, it could be viable pathway to a similar result. Though I do wonder how the bread from the two different pathways would reflect their journeys.

What stops you from going over the top? Making bread with 14% or 15% gluten, well above your normal loaf, would be interesting.

I would imagine that this experiment confirms the adage that lower protein flours act as if the hydration is higher. So if you're working with a cheaper, lower protein flour due to circumstances, budget, or what have you, you might add vital wheat gluten to increase the protein as you recommend. Alternately, perhaps lowering the hydration to compensate might have similar results. It might be interesting to see an experiment to see if it's possible to get a similar loaf to your highest protein loaf using that no-name supermarket flour, to see if it's possible simply by altering hydration levels.

I've noticed you used 75% hydration on this occasion, whereas you usually use 80%. Is that a compensation for lower gluten? Or is it because of higher ambient humidity?

Sunn.love to look at your channel and learn from the master. Thank you!!!

Unbleached all purpose flour in Canada has 13.3percent gluten. I'm liking your videos! I should not need supplement right?

Tak for nogle gode videoer. Jeg bruger din opskrift på brød, den virker hver gang og smager skønt.......Her kommer spørgsmålet, din brødkniv Kasumi, skal den slibes, eller holder den sig skarp ? Jeg har købt flere brødknive, men de har mistet deres skarphed ret hurtigt.

I'd love to see you experiment with differing amounts of vital wheat gluten with 100% whole wheat flour. I am trying to eat and bake healthier, and this means avoiding white flour as much as possible.

Gettin’ fancy using labels now 🤣

What is the reason you bulk to only 25% and not more?

Great experiment! What brand of vital wheat gluten is this? I add the same proportion of vital wheat gluten/flour/water as you do, but the dough becomes extremely elastic and not extensible (for hours into bulk ferment) like yours. The flour used is also 9.6 g protein per 100 g flour.

So, how'd they taste?

My sourdough crumb is gummy and the bread is heavy. I use gold medal bread flour, 15% starter, 65% hydration. Bulk fermented until doubling, cold retarded the bread. I’ve tried bulk fermenting less, cold bulk ferment, not retarding the loaf, letting it ferment a little then retarding it, they all have a gummy crumb. My ambient temp is 32C. I maintain My dough between 26-28C. I baked it in a preheated dutch oven, 450F, 30m lid on, 25 lid off. I’ve tried baking it 20m lid on, 25 lid off. I{ve tried a hotter over. The bread internal temp 96-98C, let it cool completely (3h). What do you suggest I do?

When you use whole wheat do you use more gluten?

damn sune, your yt merch game on point

I really enjoy your videos, thank you. Have you ever tried making bread with Duram flour? Maybe worth an experiment?

What will happen if used with whole what flour, which already has higher protein? Oh that makes me wonder how it would be if used in an already strong flour? 🤔

Thank you for all your very good videos! Have you tried baking with Swedish flours? And do you know if I can order danish flour to Sweden? I guess I could go to Denmark myself now when boarder is open, but I still need a valid reason to go. But I suppose flour shopping is valid, although the white powder could look a little suspicous...

What is “vital “ gluten? Is it the same as wet gluten?

I thought one downside of VWG was the effect on flavor, was hoping you'd review that as well.

I'm watching your how much whole wheat can you do after I watch this one. Is it possible to do a hundred percent whole-wheat and then do added gluten to get it to work. My wife doesn't like the folic acid added to bread flower

I looked for gluten a time ago but the sellers didnt have information about the protein % in the gluten. My bread flour has 10g protein/100g so i will try to add 15g of gluten next time to see what happens!

Hi there. Just a short Question: Is this a usual Glass Bowl you use for covering in the oven? Doesn´t the glass spring with this high temperature difference?

Hi which size baskets did you use in this video?

Awesome experiment. If I could only find vital wheat gluten. Have you done an experiment comparing kneading, stretch and fold, and no agitation at all until the shaping?

What about 100% vital flour? haha In the package it says 76% gluten, so it still has fermentable carbohidrates and some fiber. There has to be a point where trading gluten for carbohidrates is no longer beneficial though.

DEAR GOD, HE'S AT IT AGAIN! WILL HE EVER BE STOPPED!?

Thanks for make this experiments!!! It save us beginners a lot of time and not so much waist. Just have a question: if i use the extra added gluten, it means that i should elevate the hydration porcentaje? I just started a 60% hydration loaf with extra gluten added and it felt a bit hard. Still have time to add some extra water 😂 should I?

I know before I even watch the video that all your bread will be good and some very good, where as mine is ok but always very sticky what ever parameters I Change 😢

You rock, Sune!

A quick question - I like the oval bannetons you are using. However, your link to "proofing baskets" only shows round bannetons. Do you have an affiliate link to oval bannetons?

What’s an approximate time for the bulk ferment? I don’t have a container where I could tell if it rose by 25%.

Did you add starter before your 1 hour rest? If not, when did you add it?

Hi, if I use whole wheat flour that has high protein content but it doesn’t develop high gluten. How do I use your calculator to determine how much vital wheat gluten to add?thanks.

Does VWG affect the the taste? I notice you didn't do a taste test.

Hi Sune, Could you do (or have you done) some experiment on roller versus stone-milled? I got some beautiful stone-ground organic flour a while back. It's been making tasty bread, but a quite flat, even after I tried adding extra gluten (could be I'm messing up though). I wonder if the type of milling just doesn't allow for a strong gluten network in this kind of flour. (I guess people tend to use some smaller percentage mixed in, but if using 100% stone-milled then you should expect a bit of a flatter loaf... can anyone confirm that?).

I noticed you used 75% hydration in this test whereas you usually use 80%. Is that to compensate for lower gluten content or is it because of higher ambient humidity?

What is the purpose of the retard in the frig? Can that step be skipped or significantly shortened? If so, what would be the result?

Hello Foodgeek!! I have a question. Have you ever froze the sourdough raw dough so you can bake it any time you want the freshest bread??