Cereal Chem 57:92 - 93.  |  VIEW ARTICLE
Chlorine Treatment of Cake Flours. IV. Effects of Storing and Heating Nondefatted and Defatted Flours.

A. C. Johnson and R. C. Hoseney. Copyright 1980 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

Storing flour at room temperature for two months improved the volume and grain of cakes baked from the flour. More dramatic improvement resulted with flour at the top of a bag stored at 4 C for eight months; flour from the remainder of that bag showed no improvement. When untreated flour was defatted and stored at room temperature for two months, its cake-baking properties after reconstitution of lipids were comparable to those of Cl2-treated flour. The changes occurring in stored flour can be accelerated by heat. Defatted flour was improved, with or without heating, after a much shorter storage period than was necessary for nondefatted flour. Flour appears to contain a component(s) that, at least to some extent, inhibits such changes, and the hexane extraction removes or inactivates that component. The data suggested that the better baking quality of defatted, heat-treated flour was in part, if not totally, because of changes in the starch.