Cereal Chem 60:24 - 27.  |  VIEW ARTICLE
Development and "Undevelopment" of Wheat Dough by Mixing: Microscopic Structure and Its Relation to Bread-Making Quality.

O. Paredes-Lopez and W. Bushuk. Copyright 1983 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) of dough revealed changes in dough microstructure during development and undevelopment. There was evidence that undevelopment transformed the gluten of optimally developed dough from a continuous membranelike structure into a discontinuous meshlike structure. SEM of gliadins and glutenins isolated from doughs showed structural differences between mixing treatments. Undevelopment transformed glutenins from a fibrillar structure into one that contained ruptured membranes and numerous particles or globules. On the basis of the SEM results and other analytical results, we postulated that undevelopment results in the association of gluten proteins (mainly glutenin) into aggregates. This structural change transformed the membranelike structure of optimally developed gluten with good gas retention capacity, into a fibrillar or globular structure with poor gas retention capacity. The exact nature of the forces involved in the aggregation process remains to be discovered.