Flour aging

Flour-aging agents Flour of sulfur Flours... 

Flour Bleaching Agents and Bread Improvers. Freshly milled flour contains carotenoid pigments that cause the flour to have a yellow color. In addition, when the flour is made into dough the product is sticky and unmanageable. As the flour ages, a natural process takes place which turns the flour white and improves its baking qualities. Because the natural process takes quite a bit of time, additives are used to speed up the process. 

Flour-aging agents -disturbances associated with [WHEAT AND OTHER CEREAL GRAINS] (Supplement)... 

If flour is allowed to age for about a month, its natural yellowish color will fade to white due to the effects of oxygen. This aging period can allow insects to spoil the flour, and is often eliminated by adding bleaching agents, such as benzoyl peroxide. 

In its action potassium bromate resembles the effect of ageing flour more than any other oxidiser. It has proved impossible to find a legal slow acting substitute for potassium bromate. This has caused bakers to discontinue using the ADD process (Chapter 7). 

Direct behavioral evidence of how stored-product insects move among patches is limited, but what is available shows that stored-product pests readily leave patches of food, can find and exploit multiple patches, and that these processes are influenced by a variety of endogenous and exogenous factors. The time Cryptolestes ferrugineus spent in refugia has been shown to be influenced by strain, sex, and age (Cox and Parish, 1991 Cox et al., 1989, 1990). A variety of factors have been shown to influence the decision by red flour beetles to leave food patches, including insect density... 

Bell, C.H. and Savvidou, N. 1999. The toxicity of Vikane (sulfuryl flouride) to age groups of eggs of the Mediterranean flour moth Ephestia kuehnielld). J. Stored Prod. Res. 35, 233-247. 

As mentioned earlier, HMTD is a very fine white powder. Fresh, it resembles talc or flour. As it ages HMTD begins to decompose and clumps together. Examples of both fresh and aged HMTD can be seen in Figure 3.9. 

The lethality of ionizing radiation is proportional to the complexity of the organism. Humans, for example, cannot survive more than 800 r., but it may take 2 million r. to inactivate a microorganism. Insect life, of the type which infests field crops, show intermediate stability. Information gleaned from the best available sources (B15, Bl, H9) indicate that a 1000-r. exposure will kill all eggs, 1300 r. will kill all larvae, and 3,000 r. will destroy all young pupae. The resistance of insects to radiation increases with age. For example, to kill some adult species requires 50 to 60,000 r. Adult flour beetles succumb at 10,000 to 16,000 r. 

Acidity. This increases with the ash, and also varies with the season and state of preservation of the flour, the proportion of acid increasing with the age and with poor storage conditions. New flours have acidities lying between 0 04 and o o8% (0 046-0 092 on the dry matter), expressed as sulphuric acid and determined by the method given above (see 8) in no case should the value exceed o io% (0 1x5% on the dry matter). In old or badly stored flour these limits are exceeded. 

More recently Braganca, Faulkner, and Quastel (B15) showed that this inhibition of acetylcholine synthesis in brain slices by ammonia is consistent only in the diminution of bound acetylcholine. They further showed that the addition of inhibitors of glutamine synthesis, such as methionine sulfoxide, ethionine sulfoxide, and methionine sulfoximine (the toxic product, causing convulsions, formed in flour chemically aged with nitrogen trichloride) would partially reverse the ammonium inhibition. These observations were confirmed and extended to a wide variety of ATP-requiring reactions by Weil-Malherbe. In support of this suggestion was the observation that ammonia is taken up by the brain in hepatic coma (B8). The observations are valid and have been confirmed, but the interpretation of the data and the hypothesis are questionable. A quantitative basis for the evaluation of this mechanism can... 

The oxidising properties of ozone have led to the application of this gas to the bleaching of such substances as starch, flour, oils, and wax, delicate fabrics, etc. It has been used in the production of artificial silk and synthetic camphor. It has also been used to aid the ageing or maturing of wines, spirits, and tobacco. The action of ozone on unsaturated organic compounds provides a very convenient general method for the preparation of aldehydes and ketones, which has already been applied to the manufacture of vanillin for flavouring purposes and heliotropin for perfumery. 

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