Dudes, pleas...

Stop obsesing with 2-4% diference in gluten! English flour, Americans flour - just make dough denser and it will keep shape longer before going flat.

Especially if you bake in baking pan! In pan anything keeps bread (actually pan :> ) shape! Corn, buckwheat, rice, whatever.

Without pan "week gluten" make bread flat. But on the other hand week gluten flour is better for cakes makers.

Without gluten and pan you can make pancakes-like bread what still is called bread in some current but ancient traditions.

O, and "wheat only bread" started to be so popular (as in: be only one thing called bread) only when yeasts has been discovered and only in West Europe / North America culture. Even Germany still is using a lot of rye and Mexico is using a lot of corn...

And to article subject: yea, mixing harder adds a lot of air into dough and when heated gas expands so bread "grows"... And, especially in pan, it looks "normal"... But intensive mixing also kills yeasts that create CO^2 in dough so it kills bread growth... So, yeah, you realy need that gluten so air is trapped in the dough :)

Also short bread growth time kills taste... But you can faster push whatever-you-are-making to customers!

And that suposedly "american" "sponge-and-dough" is just ancient and global way of making bread...