An outline of the non-linear viscoelastic behaviour of wheat flour dough in shear

Abstract

Creep and creep recovery, stress relaxation and small- and large-amplitude oscillatory shear experiments have been used to study the steady-state flow behaviour and the transient viscoelastic response of wheat flour dough in shear over large ranges of time, stress and strain. The results are discussed with reference to the limited body of reliable literature data. Dough does display a linear viscoelastic domain. The complex character of its non-linear viscoelastic properties is essentially due to the extremely low shear rate limit of the initial Newtonian plateau and to the onset of time-dependent flow behaviour above a certain strain threshold, which explain qualitatively the discrepancies observed in certain cases on a part of the range of the rheological variables explored, despite global self-consistency of the results. Comparison of gluten and dough linear viscoelastic properties shows that dough cannot be viewed simply as a concentrated suspension of starch granules in the hydrated viscoelastic gluten matrix.