Cereal Chem 58:32 - 35.  |  VIEW ARTICLE
Effect of Bleaching, Maturing, and Oxidizing Agents on Vitamins Added to Wheat Flour.

P. M. Ranum, R. J. Loewe, and H. T. Gordon. Copyright 1981 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

Bread and cake flours fortified with vitamins B1, B2, B6, A, niacin, and folacin to the National Research Council's proposed levels and with pantothenic acid to the optional Canadian enrichment standards were subjected to a number of commonly used flour treatments (azodicarbonamide, benzoyl peroxide, ascorbic acid, potassium bromate, chlorine, and chlorine dioxide) alone and in typical combinations from normal up to 16 times normal treatment rates. The three vitamins included in current enrichment programs (B1, B2, and niacin) were unaffected by any of the applied treatments. Chlorination was the only flour treatment found to have any detrimental effect on the other vitamins, significantly (P less than 0.05) reducing the level of vitamin B6 an average of 16% and having a lesser, but not statistically significant, effect on vitamin A, pantothenic acid, and folacin. Unlike the natural vitamin E in wheat flour, added d-alpha-tocopheryl acetate was found to be resistant to destruction by flour bleaching. The mill application of bleaching, maturing, and oxidizing agents is therefore quite compatible with vitamin fortification.