Miller Magazine Issue: 132 December 2020

58 MILLER / december 2020 Professional millers know that wheat clean- ing and preparing stages are important as mill- ing system to have balanced mill, which is re- sponsible to have the highest flour extraction and best flour quality. Conditioning is the critical part of wheat preparation system for milling. Conditioning process is adding water (or worm water if the wheat or weather is cold) to the wheat and followed by a rest period in tempering bins un- til the added water penetrates the kernel and reaches the optimum moisture distribution which helps to prepare the wheat for optimum milling. “Tempering” is a term refer to the rest period. If the wheat is milled without conditioning the bran becomes brittle, and turns into small particles during milling by the roller mills, which contaminate the produced flour. There- fore, the produced flour ash content will be high. Milling energy will be high, the damaged starch of produced flour will be high, it will produce sticky dough, and its baking qualities would be low. Whole wheat flour is sometime produced by milling wheat without conditioning. BENEFITS OF CONDITIONING The objectives in the conditioning process are: 1- To toughen the bran but not so much to remain in large particles during the milling process, avoid production of small bran parti- “Reducing tempering time was the aim of modern dampening equipment, which based on the increasing the rate of water penetration by reducing water surface tension by generating high frequency vibration. Reducing water surface tension enhance the efficiency of water dispersion over the grain mass and water penetration into the kernel. This equipment does not break the kernel because it does not include scouring process.” Wheat Conditioning and Tempering Prof. Farhan Alfin Prof. Dr. Farhan Alfin is working now as a production supervisor at Darıca Flour Mill (Trabzon – Turkey). He obtained his Ph.D. from Ege University in Izmir, Turkey, from the Department of Food Engineering in 2000. He worked at Avrasya University (Trabzon – Turkey) from 2015 to 2019 and held the position of Head of The Food Engineering Department. He worked at Al-Baath University in Homs City, Syria at the Food Engineering Department from 2000 to 2015, and he held the position of Head of Department from 2006 to 2010. During that period, he offered his consultancy and education services to several flour mills in Syria. On another level, he worked as the executive manager of Alakhras Mill in Rural Homs from 2009 to 2015. He is also the author of the “Cereal Milling Technology” book written in the Arabic language. Email: alfafin65@gmail.com