Flours improvers

Granulation of Enzymes. Although the trend is to market iadustrial ensymes as Uquid products, soUd ensyme is needed. Examples of this are ensymes for soUd detergents, animal feed, and flour improvement. 

Vitamin C, or ascorbic acid, is surely the best known of all vitamins. It was the first vitamin to be discovered (1928), the first to be structurally characterized (1933), and the first to be synthesized in the laboratory (1933). Over 200 million pounds of vitamin C are now synthesized worldwide each year, more than the total amount of all other vitamins combined. In addition to its use as a vitamin supplement, vitamin C is used as a food preservative, a "flour improver" in bakeries, and. an animal food additive. 

There are a few areas in the subjects covered by this book where unfortunately the same words or are used to describe different things. They are gluten and flour improver. In food law a flour improver would cover a substance added to flour to improve its performance, usually in bread. Such a substance is ascorbic acid. In a bakery, the expression flour improver covers a mixture that is added to the dough. In this context a flour improver will contain not only substances like ascorbic acid but also, for example, enzyme active soya flour, emulsifiers and possibly fat. 

After the milling process, any gaseous treatments are applied, any powder treatments, e.g. ascorbic acid, are added, as well as any fortifying ingredients such as calcium sulfate. Different countries have various policies on fortifying flour. In the UK, white flour is fortified with calcium to make up for the calcium lost by not making a wholemeal flour. In the USA, bread is fortified with folic acid. It is possible for an untreated flour to be mixed with a flour improver containing the powder treatments. 

Bakers tend not to like wholemeal bread flour because it is less reliable in performance than white flour. One reason for this is the restrictive legal position on flour improvers, which makes the dough less tolerant. In addition, when a wholemeal flour is made in a roller mill, all the flour components that the mill has separated have to be recombined at the bottom of the mill. If a spout blocks temporarily one component will be held back. If this sort of problem leads to an excess of white flour then the flour will bake well, if a local excess of bran occurs then baking performance will suffer. 

Brown flour is a term that covers the extraction rates above 70% and below 100%, i.e. between white and wholemeal flour. Unlike wholemeal flour the full range of flour improvers are legal. The sale of brown bread is lower than that of wholemeal. Some nutritional thinking points to... 

The bread making properties of ordinary white bread flour improve for some time after manufacture, which is the origin of oxidative flour treatments. The shelf life of such a flour is around a year. If the moisture content can be kept low, either by selecting low moisture wheat or by drying wheat, the shelf life can be increased to three years. This sort of flour is supplied for ship s stores and similar purposes. This is the modern alternative to ship s biscuits. 

This section covers all the additives and treatments that are added or applied to flour. Some of these qualify as permitted flour treatments in law. The term flour improver is also used as a synonym. In this work the term improver is restricted to the compound improvers that are added to bread doughs. These mixtures tend to contain not only flour treatments but other required ingredients as well such as emulsifiers. The statutory additions that are made to flour for nutritional reasons are excluded. Also excluded are some of the substances that have historically been used but have now been universally banned. Some substances such as potassium bromate that are banned in the UK but are still legal elsewhere are covered. 

Long ago it was noticed that the baking quality of white flour improved with storage for 1-2 months. This effect occurred more rapidly if the flour was exposed to the air. During storage, initially the level of free fatty acids increases, presumably owing to lipolytic activity. Lipoxygenase activity then produces oxidised fatty acids as the proportion of linoleic and linolenic acids falls while the number of -S-S- bonds decreases. 

As well as acting as a flour improver, chlorine dioxide also bleaches the flour. Unfortunately it also destroys the tocopherols. 

Malt Flour. Malt flour is the traditional source of extra a-amylase to add to flour. Now that British bread flour is substantially home grown there is little need of this supplementation. Some bakers would claim that malt flour improves the flavour of the bread. Malt flour is a food and not an additive. 

In bulk fermentation and sponge batter processes the bonds are broken by the action of enzymes and flour improvers. In the Chorley-wood process the bonds are broken by intense mechanical input and the action of the improver. Similarly, in an ADD process the effect is... 

Mixing. The flour, water, yeast and salt are mixed together with any other ingredients. Other possible ingredients include fat, enzyme active soy flour and flour improver. 

The flour improver would contain sufficient L-cysteine hydrochloride to give 35 mg kg-1 of flour (equivalent to around 27 mg kg-1 of L-cysteine) with sufficient potassium bromate to give 25 mg kg-1 of flour and sufficient ascorbic acid to give 50 mg kg-1 of flour. The above assumes a flour of 12% protein that has had added to it up to 20 mg kg-1 potassium bromate. Alternatively, with an untreated flour all the potassium bromate would be in the improver. 

A further development from ADD methods is the use of spiral mixers by small bakers. These machines put energy into the dough less rapidly than the sort of mixer used in the Chorleywood process but a spiral mixer is less expensive and more versatile. The actual dough development time will always depend on the recipe, the flour improver and the flour but, for comparison, while a Chorleywood mixer will develop a dough in 2-5 min a spiral mixer will take 8-15 min. 

Nielsen et al. (39) used pea flour and pea protein concentrate, both cooked and raw, in noodles and spaghetti. The pasta was made from composite flours prepared by blending 33% pea flour with 67% wheat flour or 20% pea concentrate with 80% wheat flour. Protein content of the fortified noodles was approximately one-third higher than the wheat flour noodles. Addition of pea flour reduced the cooking time, but resulted in a softer product and lower yield than the wheat pastas. Precooking the pea flour improved flavor and decreased noodle dough stickiness, but the texture and yield of the cooked pasta was still less than that of wheat products. 

Field Pea Flour in Other Baked Products. When McWatters (44) substituted 8% field pea flour and 4.6% field pea concentrate for milk protein (6%) in baking powder biscuits, sensory attributes, crumb color, and density of the resulting biscuits were adversely affected. No modifications were made in recipe formulation when pea products were incorporated. The doughs were slightly less sticky than control biscuits that contained whole milk. This might be due to lack of lactose or to the different water absorption properties of pea protein or starch. Panelists described the aroma and flavor of these biscuits as harsh, beany and strong. Steam heating the field pea flour improved the sensory evaluation scores, but they were never equivalent to those for the controls. 

Cottonseed, peanut, sesame seed, and soybean flours, when used as supplements, add to the quality of the protein. The improvement of protein quality was due to the flours compensating for limiting amino acids. Supplementation using various flours improved total protein, amino acid content and some physical characteristics in akamu, yeast bread and sugar cookies. 

Flour treatment agent/bleaching agent, dough improver, flour improver... 

Food colours Flavours and sweeteners Fat emulsifiers and stabilising agents Flour improvers - antistaling agents and bleaches Antioxidants Preservatives... 

Compared to the nontreated sample, all three succinylation treatments of flour improved foam stability at pH 6.5. At pH... 

In America St. John s Wort grows freely in the cornfields, which proximity was held by Tilke to operate beneficially upon both herb and grain. Discussing American wheat which has grown among quantities of St. John s Wort he tells us "It is well known, by almost every baker who works in his business, that this flour improves the quality of the bread, by... 

L-Ascorbic acid is also added to food in essentially a non-nutrient capacity such as a preservative or oxygen acceptor, as an acidulant, as a stabilizer of cured meat color, or as a flour improver. Because of the ene-diol group, it has a marked inhibitory influence on the oxidation-reduction reactions responsible for undesirable color, flavor, and odor development. Its mechanism of action is dependent upon the characteristics of the food or food ingredient, the associated environments, the processing technology, and the storage expectancy of the product. 

Table XXIX. Legal Status of L-Ascorbic Acid as a Flour Improver...

---