13 hours ago, Al Percival said:
Thanks Teo. I'll wait to hear back from @JoaoBertinatti about his experience with adding vital wheat gluten and then I might try again with the artificially enriched flour. Here is Australia there is very little choice in flours, despite Australia being quite a big wheat producer. It shows in the quality of the baked goods and breads available which are mostly pretty dreadful.
I had 5% gluten added at every step there was flour, even in making the 3 builds. Brazil is a big wheat producer as well, but people want always the cheapest stuff here... you see, I think if you mix more than 10' in the first step it should work without gluten IF you lower the hydration... maybe if you don't add the water at the last step with 11.5% it could work. And yes, everytime I mixed for only 5 minutes or less it looked like cake batter when I started adding water.... and at first I thought it was overmixed but no. Btw my best flour here is 9.8%. I have read somewhere in the book that the best approach when bread flour or high gluten flour is required, would be adding gluten and the second best approach, adding more flour... I know that here in Brazil, they do panettones without added gluten and with lower hydratation, so it should work, you will probably end with smaller alveoli .... at last, I think that if you kept mixing for 45 minutes at highest speed that cake batter ((with a few rests in freezer) it could work something out, because if you take look at gateau battu, why not....
