Miller Magazine Issue: 124 April 2020

61 COVER STORY MILLER / APRIL 2020 Some of Syrian companies opened flour mill to support wheat flour to Syrian flatbread producers. QUALITY OF USED FLOUR 0.55-0.65% ash white flour (70-72% extraction) gen- erally is used to produce white Syrian Arab flatbread, it is also produced brown bread from 0.65-0.95% ash high-extraction (%82-95) flour (Köten, 2017; Quail, 2016). Protein content and quality are the most im- portant quality criteria of flour for Arabic bread quali- ty. Optimum flour protein is 10-12% (Miskelly, 2016), wet gluten 23-25% and flours should give high exten- sibility, elasticity and stability doughs (Köten, 2017; Popper and Hamed, 2020). The suitable flour doughs will be neither shrink when rolled out nor collapse in the oven (Popper and Hamed, 2020). Because the lim- ited crumb in flatbread does not require very strong gluten to hold the gas produced by the yeast (Morris, 2016). PRODUCTION OF SYRIAN FLATBREAD A typical recipe would be flour 100%, yeast 1%, salt 1.5%, and water 56-60% according to flour absorp- tion. Some bakers add sugar up to 30% (Quail, 2016; Popper and Hamed, 2020). After mixing the dough is allowed to a bulk fermentation period of approxi- mately an hour. After bulk fermentation, the doughs are divided into balls of 60-100 gram according to the loaves required diameter and rested before sheeting (Popper and Hamed, 2020). The sheeting is done to produce a round thin dough piece by three sets of roll- ers, the first just gently flattens the dough. The second set has narrower gap between rollers which flatten the dough in the same direction. The third set roller flatten the dough in orthogonal direction and the gap between the rollers set to produce the desired final thickness. The sheeted dough piece is left to ferment for 20 minutes. The dough is then baked in an oven with temperature over 600 °C and baking time less than 20 s (Morris, 2016; Quail, 2016). During baking the fermented sheeted thin dough separates into two distinct layers formatting a pocket in the two-layered flatbreads. This happen because of developing a fine cell structure in the sheeted dough during fermenta- tion and a thin dry skin on the surface. In very high temperature oven gases in the cell structure expand and steam is generated so fast in the formed crust forcing the dough layers apart and creating a pocket in all over the dough piece and takes the shape of a ball. After baking, the loaf cools and collapses, but the crumb remains divided (Miskelly, 2016; Quail, 2016; Popper and Hamed, 2020). FLATBREAD QUALITY Syrian flatbread quality criteria and assessing systems have been studied and various scoring methods have been developed by researchers. Quail (2016), separat- ed the characteristics of quality scoring systems into