Wet‐milling/Ammonia Process for the Manufacture of Wheat Starch and Gluten

Abstract

AbstractA laboratory‐scale procedure is proposed for the separation of starch and gluten from wet‐milled wheat. Our purpose was to assess the potential of wheat as a starch crop by optimising starch quality and yield. Features are the rapid steeping by mildly fracturing the wheat grains, the separation of starch from the gluten‐fibre mass in a slurry process, and the separation of fibres and gluten by reversibly dissolving the latter in dilute ammonia. This procedure affords starch with a low content of damaged granules which appears to be less dependent on wheat quality than in the conventional wheat flour process. Starch yield is similar to that of the flour process. Gluten recovered from ammonia is much stiffer than gluten from flour and its quality is somewhat lower, but it is generally suitable to increase loaf volume. Because of the low protein recovery and the use of ammonia, development into a large‐scale process is not likely.