Dough tests

General References Dry Solids, Paste and Dough Mixing Equipment Test-... 

Dried Gluten. This material is sold as vital wheat gluten, it is produced by a scaled up version of the process for producing wet gluten for flour testing. A flour and water dough is made and then washed to remove the starch, the soluble proteins and the pentosan-based gum fraction. This latter fraction is an example of a non-starch carbohydrate. 

These tests measure the way in which flour behaves when it has been made into a dough. They work with a specially made dough and give an indication of how the flour will behave in that situation. This sort of information is inherently more useful than a mere protein content. 

There is an American test for biscuit flour that involves producing standard cookies baked on a standard aluminium plate. The diameter of the finished product is measured. The greater the diameter the higher the score. This test is of course a measure of dough extensibility, which is the crucial property for biscuit flours. 

Dough development is a fundamental process in bread making, without it there is just a paste of flour, water and the other ingredients. If the bread is to expand and form a proper cell structure then this change must take place. While it is quite easy to test for dough development by prodding some dough with a thumb it is more complicated at a chemical level. 

Triticale flour has been extensively tested in Poland, a country where rye bread is traditional. The best results were obtained by using 90% triticale flour with 10% rye flour. The rye flour was made into a flour brew for 24 hours at 28-29°C. Half the triticale flour was made into a sour dough for 3 hours at 32°C followed by mixing with the rest of the ingredients plus 1.5% of salt on the flour weight. The bread was then scaled and proved for 30 min at 32°C followed by baking at 235-245°C. 

To perform a fair test the experimenter will need to practice hand mixing one or more batches before the experiment is carried out. Experienced hand mixers can usually mix a dough as fast as a machine. 

This test gives only relative values, and for a determination more in consonance with practice, a larger quantity of water—say 10 litres—is taken and doughed with the necessary amount of flour. 

For laboratory tests use may be made of a small jacketed metal oven containing heavy mineral oil and coated with asbestos board it is heated by gas and serves to bake loaves of about 150-200 grams prepared by doughing 1 kilo of flour with the required amount of water (about 500 c.c.), 1% of sodium chloride and 20 grams of beer (or pressed) yeast being added and the whole left to rise for 2 hours in an oven at 30-330 C. 

Microscopic Examination —This serves to show if a bread is made from wheaten flour alone or if it contains also extraneous flours. The test is made on the crumb, parts which are less well baked being chosen or, if possible, lumps or nodules of dough such as are often present. The fragments taken are made into a paste with water and the microscopic examination then made. A convenient method, which gives excellent results, is as follows ... 

Ritman, E.L., Borah, B., Dufresne, T.E., Phipps, R.J., Sacha, J.P., Jorgensen, S.M., and Turner, R.T. 2002. 3-D Synchrotron pCT allows unique insight of changes in bone quality. The American Society for Bone and Mineral Research Annual Meeting, San Antonio TX, September 20-24. Ross, K.A., Pyrak-Nolte, L.J., and Campanella, O.H. 2004. The use of ultrasound and shear oscillatory tests to characterize the effect of mixing time on the rheological properties of dough. Food Res. Int. 37, 567-577. 

Laboratory production of crackers with the same flavor quality as commercial crackers has been difficult. Micka (11) found that when crackers are produced in a laboratory and no starter sponge is kept, and equipment is kept sterile, fermentation is generally retarded and the resulting dough has a high pH and the crackers have an undesirable flavor. Dynn (17) attempted to develop a procedure for the production of experimental crackers to test flour quality. He found that the crackers made from the same batch of flour varied widely in flavor quality and concluded that commercial crackers could not be produced in a laboratory. However, Pizzinatto and Hoseney (4,14) have recently developed a procedure for the production of satisfactory experimental saltine crackers under laboratory conditions. 

Relative degree of attraction +++ >++> + > > -, where +++ = response to species own pheromone plus dough and = response to dough control nt = not tested. bAttraction increased significantly when triene 1 was omitted from blend (only 5 and 10 present). 

The Requirement of a Divalent Alkaline Earth Metal. Lime-treated corn produces a dough whose functional properties depend on the pasting characteristics of starch. The hydroxides of different alkaline earth metals were tested to determine whether they could replace calcium in the nixtamalization process. It was not possible to prepare tortillas with adequate sensory or mechanical properties from corn treated with... 

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