Effect of Dry‐Heated Prime Starch and Tailings Fractions in Wheat Flour on Pancake Springiness

Abstract

Because chlorination is prohibited in Japan for health and safety concerns, a safer improvement method for wheat flour is desired and dry-heating of wheat flour improves the pancake springiness as an alternative to chlorination (Seguchi 1990, 1993; Seguchi et al 1998; Ozawa and Seguchi 2006). Sollars (1958) and Donelson and Wilson (1960), by means of reconstitution technique, investigated the effect of chlorine bleaching on flour fractions in cakes and cookies. Russo and Doe (1970), Thomasson et al (1995), and Fustier and Gelinas (1998) reported that heat treatment of unchlorinated cake flour improved its cake-baking properties. Heating of wheat at 60-100°C is detrimental to loaf volume (Hutchinson and Booth 1946; Becker and Sallans 1956; McDermott 1971; Hook 1980; Every 1987). Hydrophobicity of the surface of prime starch granules in the dry-heated wheat flour was observed (Seguchi 1984), similar to that in chlorinated wheat flour (Seguchi and Matsuki 1977a). Seguchi (1984, 1993) reported that the improvements of pancakes were caused by lipophilic change of starch granule surface protein by dry-heating of wheat flour. Ozawa and Seguchi (2006) showed hydrophobicity in dry-heated wheat flour, fractionated the dry-heated wheat flour to water solubles, gluten, prime starch, and tailings fractions and indicated the interaction between prime starch and tailings fractions. Nakamura et al (in press) reported that dry-heated wheat flour could increase the volume of Kasutera cake (Japanese sponge cake) due to the hydrophobic nature of dry-heated wheat flour. However, as yet there was no direct evidence that dry-heated prime starch and tailings fractions were related to the springiness of pancake from the pancake baking test with reconstituted wheat flour, which was composed of dry-heated and unheated fractions. In this experiment, we used specific heating conditions (120°C for 120 min) for wheat flour because Ozawa and Seguchi (2006) found that drying for longer periods was not essential to pancake springiness. We fractionated wheat flour to water solubles, gluten, prime starch, and tailings fractions, and examined whether dry-heated prime starch and tailings fractions in reconstituted wheat flour contributed to the improvement of pancake springiness.