On Food and Cooking

preventing  them    from    bonding to  each

other.

Acidity in  the dough   —   as  from    a

sourdough   culture —   which   weakens the

gluten  network by  increasing  the number

of  positively  charged amino   acids   along

the protein chains, and increasing  the

repulsive   forces  between chains.

Food    Words:  Gluten

Though Chinese cooks discovered the
useful properties of gluten long before
anyone else (p. 468), it was two Italian
scientists who brought it to the attention of
Europe. In a posthumously published
manual of 1665 on optics, the Jesuit
scholar Francesco Maria Grimaldi noted
that durum semolina dough for pasta
contains a thick, sticky substance that dries
to a hard, brittle one. He named this
substance gluten, using the Latin word for
“glue.” Gluten in turn came from an Indo-