Miller Magazine Issue: 155 November 2022

70 COVER STORY MILLER / NOVEMBER 2022 Providing a comprehensive flour quality analysis can position a milling operation as a trusted resource for bakers. Essential flour quality analysis tools to build strong customer relationships Olivier Le Brun Product & Applications Specialist KPM Analytics A lot can happen during the growing, harvesting, storage, and processing of grain for flour, which ultimately impacts the composition of a product. It is essential to know the perfor- mance of the grain or flour to help ensure a bakery’s success. Given today’s high prices for flour and ingredients, bakers de- pend on their millers to provide optimal blends that ensure they are starting with the best-quality ingredients. Many millers today conduct Alveograph tests to prove flour quality for their baker customers. The Alveograph is a well- known testing method to analyze dough tenacity, extensibili- ty, elasticity, baking strength, and other properties. The Alve- ograph test allows millers to analyze and optimize blends of wheat and flour or adapt them as needed for their customers. However, the Alveograph test is only a single aspect of flour and dough quality analysis. As the initial line of defense against flour quality issues, millers can serve their customers better by expanding their abilities to analyze more rheological and func- tional attributes of flour. By providing a more complete story on flour quality, millers will be better equipped to address specific demands and improve relationships with bakers. Starch Damage Analysis: Addressing the Cause of Sticky Dough Although protein receives all the attention when describing flour quality, it is important to remember that flour is nearly 70- 80% starch. Some millers may not know that flour contains two types of starch: intact and damaged starch. All milling, industrial or performed in a laboratory, will inevi- tably produce a certain amount of damaged starch. When we look at the behavior of a damaged starch granule compared to that of a native granule, we see that: Its water absorption capacity has been multiplied by nearly 10 It is much more susceptible to hydrolysis by amylase (an enzyme with the ability to break down glucose chains that make starch) This means that the amount of damaged starch in flour sig- nificantly affects water absorption, impacting dough stickiness if there is more water than the proteins in the flour can han- dle. Additionally, damage starch also affects final product color, quality, and texture. With a term like “damaged starch,” one may consider dam- aged starch to be negative. On the contrary, starch damage requires balance. As shown in Figure 2, an optimal level of damaged starch depends on the product type and produc- tion process. In any case, millers should consider the impact of damaged starch on final product quality and recognize the importance of measuring it. How to Take Stronger Command of Starch Damage Analysis Easy-to-use technologies to measure starch damage con- tent exist today. For example, the CHOPIN Technologies SD- matic is a fully automated, enzyme-free testing device that