The role of gluten in a sugar-snap cookie system: A model approach based on gluten–starch blends

The cookie making properties of dough made from blends of commercial wheat starch and gluten were determined. Higher gluten levels decreased dough piece weight, its density, stickiness and hardness. The largest spread was obtained when no gluten was added. However, this resulted in cookies of unacceptable structure. Higher gluten contents increased spread onset time, decreased cookie spread but generally had little impact on set time while additional water lowered spread onset time and likewise had no statistically significant impact on set time. The results showed that the final cookie diameter is quite dependent on the spread onset time which itself depends on the amount of water available to the non-gluten constituents in the system. Size-exclusion high performance liquid chromatography showed that during baking, proteins aggregated. This indicated that during the process the added gluten acquired the necessary mobility for interaction. However, because increasing levels of gluten increasingly decreased the relative level of water available to itself, and because the set time, and, hence, the set temperature, did not depend on the gluten level, we concluded that cookie dough setting was not determined by an ‘apparent’ glass transition. Furthermore, more protein aggregation went hand in hand with less spread.