Understanding how wheat pretreatment and milling relate to flour functionality: Innovations from a process engineering approach

The relationships between wheat characteristics and end-use quality in bread are separated by two complex and interacting processes: milling and breadmaking. The relationship starts with breakage of the wheat; quantifying this breakage based on kernel characteristics and roller mill design and operation is the first step to understanding routes of flour streams through the process and hence the differing characteristics of these streams. Pearling (or debranning) is a new technology that alters this initial breakage and that results in better bread, for reasons not yet fully understood. Wheat flour is distinctive in its ability, when mixed with water, to form a dough that can expand to retain fermentation gases to produce the aerated structure of bread; the Dynamic Dough Density test allows this expansion capacity to be quantified in order to understand the origins of flour quality within the milling process.