What is Gluten? - Guide to Gluten-free Flours - Atta

What exactly is “gluten”?

Gluten is a Latin word and it means glue, mixture of proteins found in wheat, rye, oats and barley. As the name sounds, these grains works like glue and makes the dough of baked goods elastic and stretchable.

Wheat flour contains two types of protein strands – Glutenin and Gliadin, wrapped around starch granules. When wheat flour is combined with water, the protein strands unwind and link together to form a membrane-like network which is called gluten.

Why Gluten concept now when we have been consuming wheat all these years? Wheat in India has changed dramatically in the last 15 years, probably because of the genetic modification of wheat. It could be possibly because the farmers want to grow it faster and put genetically modified seeds which give you more yield– this, in turn, has impacted what our wheat used to be. It is because of this, the intolerance towards genetically modified food has gone up tremendously.

If you are Gluten intolerant – Indian food has several gluten-free grains which can be easily used to create fantastic gluten-free meals. Most of these are our ‘heritage’ or ancient grains which have been around for thousands of years. These include grains like Amaranth, Bajra, Jawar, Ragi and Rice. Here we list out grains from which you can make your favorite flat bread or Roti..

Below products have Gluten Contents

Whole Wheat Flour - Atta

All purpose flour - Refined flour - Maida

Wheat Semolina - Sooji

Below products do not have Gluten Contents

Rice Flour - Chawal ka Atta

Roasted Bengal-gram flour - Sattu ka atta

Sorghum - Jowar ka Atta

Maize Flour - Makai ka Atta

Chickpea Flour - Besan

Pearl Millet Flour - Bajra ka Atta

Soybean Flour - Bhatma ka atta

Finger Millet Flour - Ragi Atta

Buckwheat - Kuttu ka Atta

You can always explore all types of grains whether or not your are Gluten intolerant. It would surely benefit health-wise as each grain have different nutrients values in them.