Miller Magazine Issue: 147 March 2022

95 COVER STORY MILLER / march 2022 tion, while an automatic precision metering pump con- tinuously added the oil. Normally we only use the Ab- sorptometer for carbon black and silica in the chemical sector", explains Jessica Wiertz, Manager Applications at Brabender. Within three minutes, with little influence from the operator and only a few steps, the oil absorption of the flour could be determined. MANUAL METHOD IS MUCH MORE TIME-CONSUMING The classical determination of the oil absorption of flour by means of the pipetting method requires signifi- cantly more work steps and takes more than an hour: "Using the classical method, many more manual work steps are necessary. The flour-oil mixture is centrifuged several times, it has to stand out, be heated, decanted, drained and balanced", says Wiertz. In addition, these are all manual steps, which depend on the operator: "Of course, this is all very small-scale and does not work automatically, as it does with the Absorptometer", adds Jessica Wiertz. In the future, the process will be further optimised and also tested with other legume crops. "Af- ter analysing the flours, we have also extruded different types of meat analogues. We have tested the process with faba beans, but that tastes quite beany as a sole ingredient for meat substitutes. Faba bean mixed with yellow peas, for example, is recommendable in terms of taste", Wiertz reveals. Besides meat substitutes, other products can also be developed by extrusion from puls- es. These include gluten-free pasta made from lentils and expanded lentil snack food. About the author Jessica Wiertz has been with Brabender since 2016. There, she initially managed the application laboratory for food and feed, and is now responsible for the com- pany's application technology division. After studying food technology at today‘s Technische Hochschule Ost- westfalen-Lippe, she first worked in the quality assurance department of an industrial bakery and afterwards as a laboratory engineer in the laboratory for food technology at Hochschule Osnabrück.