Cereal Chem 50:717 - 722.  |  VIEW ARTICLE
Water-Retention Properties of Wheat Flour Fractions.

W. F. Sollars. Copyright 1973 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

Differences in the water-retention capacities (WRC) of flours of three different classes of common wheat were studied in two ways. The three major flour fractions, gluten, tailings, and starch, were obtained from a hard red winter (HRW) flour, a soft white winter (SWW) flour, and a club (soft) flour by a standard kneading fractionation, and the WRC of the individual fractions was determined. Gluten and starch from the HRW flour had moderately higher WRC than those from the soft wheat flours. The HRW tailings had much higher retentions than the other tailings. Gluten and tailings from a kneading method in which the dough was formed with dilute sodium chloride solution had lower water retentions than those from the standard fractionation. Gluten and tailings from an acetic acid extraction method had higher retentions. Starches from all three methods had about the same retentions. Flour WRC calculated from the individual fraction retentions multiplied by the fraction yields were decidedly higher than WRC determined on actual blends of the fractions. The second approach used one-fraction-at-a-time interchanges between pairs of reconstituted flours and included the water-soluble fraction. In all interchange series, the tailings caused about half of the WRC differences. SWW tailings lowered WRC of an otherwise all-HRW reconstituted flour about halfway to that of the all-soft wheat reconstituted flours. HRW tailings raised WRC of an otherwise all-soft wheat reconstituted flour about halfway to that of an all-HRW reconstituted flour. The remaining half of the WRC difference was about equally divided among the water-solubles, gluten, and starch. Water-solubles, although they had no water retention of their own, affected the WRC of reconstituted flours when interchanged. The pattern of fraction response to WRC was similar to that obtained in studies with reconstituted cookie flours.