Q&A for How to Add Gluten to Flour

Unless the flour you are using is specially made, all flours contain gluten. Bread flours generally contain added gluten, so when you supplement all-purpose flour with your own essential gluten protein, you are making it into bread flour. Whole wheat, rye -- it matters not. Gluten is what holds a dough together when it is under stress during bread making. Now, whether you should add it to pasta dough or not is another matter. Pasta is basically soggy, unleavened bread. Since you're not trying to make it rise, there wouldn't be any use in trying to fortify its ability to make gluten strands.

Yes, you can.

"Improver" is a general term that is applied to a number of things, from diastatic malt powder to nuts, grains, juice, etc., and yes, gluten. "Bread improver" is anything you add to your bread that "improves" it.

Yes. You can add it directly to the flour and mix thoroughly to evenly distribute it.

Yes, you can add wheat gluten to cake flour, but after you do, it will no longer be cake flour -- and will be usable for making bread if you put the right amount in. For cake flour to become flour for making bread, I would add about 1 tablespoon of vital wheat gluten per 2 cups of cake flour and be sure to mix it well.

Yes it can. That said, a light, fluffy, open texture versus a crumbly texture is more about dough handling then about the amount of gluten. If you are using pastry flour, you can add gluten to make it more like bread flour. If you are using regular whole wheat flour, it generally already has enough gluten so adding extra gluten may not be the best solution - lit may make the bread gummy. You might first try mixing bread flour with the whole wheat (50/50 as a start) and see if you get the results you want. Then increase % of whole wheat as you practice handling the dough.