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Rapid Methods to Predict Soft-Wheat Dough Quality for Specific Food Products

¹Food Science Australia, North Ryde, NSW 1670, Australia. ²Value Added Wheat CRC, North Ryde, NSW 1670, Australia. ³GrainCorp P/L, Marong, Vic 3515, Australia. ⁴Corresponding author. Phone: + 61 2 9490 8404. Fax: + 61 2 9490 8499. E-mail: Ian.Batey@csiro.au ⁵Allied Mills, Summer Hill, NSW 2130, Australia.

A flour miller must provide flour with the potential to produce dough properties suited to the specifications for food manufacturers involved with a range of food products. This difficult task could be simplified if grain of suitable dough-forming potential was segregated at harvest and delivered for milling. To achieve the identification of grain of suitable dough-quality potential, various published testing systems were adapted and evaluated using a total of 149 grain samples from five successive harvests to establish procedures that could be applied to “running samples”, each representing the contents of a specific storage cell. Some of the methods proved to be inadequate for this purpose. The best possibilities were methods based on the swelling index for glutenin (SIG) principle. The SIG test, combined with grain-protein content, is suitable for screening large numbers of wheat meal samples, making it possible for mill buyers to select stored grain lots that will suit the flour dough strength specifications for specific customers and their food products.