Miller Magazine Issue: 147 March 2022

109 ARTICLE MILLER / march 2022 methods we have used to evaluate flour quality in the past are not extremely precise. For instance, if your baked product is specified for a flour that has protein content between 12-13%, you may not necessarily find an obvious difference in your final product if you use flour with 11.9% or 13.1% protein. Never- theless, some bakers may reject flour out of this assigned spec, which can become wasteful and costly over time. METHODS TO STREAMLINE & SIMPLIFY DOUGH ANALYSIS Consumer taste and/or expectation is another aspect to consider when evaluating flour quality. Some regions simply may not have access to the same type of flour as others, which can lead to a different final product. For ex- ample, a baguette from France may have very different crumb structure, texture, and a general appearance to a baguette from South America. But, if these products sat- isfy the consumer’s taste for that region, then the baker is doing their job. Therefore, when it comes to determining the best pa- rameters to evaluate flour quality, it again depends on the expectations for the product the baker is producing. As technology has advanced, bakers now have a solution to test their incoming flour and simulate how a batch will behave in the baking process without having to waste excessive time and money performing exper- imental production runs. At the forefront is the Mixolab 2, an intuitive, fast, and automated machine that allows bakers (or millers) to check the quality and regularity of flours, assess impact of enzymes, develop new formula- tions (including high-fiber or gluten-free), and streamline production processes of finished products. The Mixolab 2 is a “dough translator” that converts complex technical and scientific information into six sim- ple quality indices, known as the internationally recog- nized CHOPIN+ protocol. These six indices are: 1. Water absorption: This is the water quantity needed for the dough to reach maximum torque. 2. Mixing: The mixing index is the summary of dough behavior at a constant temperature (30 °C) within the first eight minutes of the test. This measures dough resis- tance to mixing stress, which will help determine optimal mixing times, stabilities, and consistency (like a Farino- graph test). 3. Protein weakening (Gluten+): During this phase, the dough is subjected to continued mixing stress (mechan-