CHAPTER 17 - FLOUR

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses wheat flour and nonwheat flours. Wheat is of importance as a food crop worldwide, whereas nonwheat sources of flour are of increasing interest as food crops. The properties of flour are influenced by the raw material, wheat, and by the milling process and the treatments applied after milling. A useful technique for the study of flour involves the fractionation of flours that differ as to baking quality into their separate components, gluten, starch, tailings, and water solubles. The fractions are recombined for baking tests. Nonwheat flours have the potential of being economically beneficial to both developing and industrial countries and of making large nutritional contributions, particularly in developing countries. Many nonwheat flours have amino acid distributions that make their proteins complementary to wheat proteins and, in some cases, to each other. Apart from the process of flour production and the nutritive value, especially protein quantity and quality, functional performance of nonwheat flours has been the major emphasis of research. Most nonwheat flours do not have any gluten-forming ability, though rye flour and triticale flour do have limited ability to form gluten.