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ENZYMATIC FLOUR STANDARDISATION Improving general flour quality

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by Maria Olsen, Senior Group Bakery Manager, DuPont Nutrition & Health

hanges in flour quality are and will continue to be a problem for the bakery industry. Large amounts of grain are processed by the milling industry and many resources used to secure the flour produced have a consistent quality. To solve these quality problems, millers are accustomed to adding various functional ingredients to flour, mainly oxidants such as ascorbic acid and enzymes such as the traditional standard alphaamylases and the technological advanced xylanases. The goal when adding these ingredients is not only to maintain a uniform performance but also to improve the general quality of the flour. Due to the increased use of enzyme technology by flourmills, rapid advances are constantly being made in improving general flour quality. DuPont Nutrition & Health offers a wide range of enzymes to make it easy to optimize almost any type of flour. The most used types of enzymes are: GRINDAMYL® A Bakery Enzymes for standardizing baking performance POWERBake® Xylanases for optimizing baking performance

a low falling number and possesses insufficient bread making qualities. The baking performance of flours with varying levels of amylase activity, represented by variations in falling numbers, is illustrated in figure 1. Clearly, the most pleasant crumb structure and bread appearance are obtained with a falling number in 250300 corresponding to a moderate enzyme activity. The amount GRINDAMYL® A required to adjust the falling number of flour is determined most easily by using the curve shown in figure two which specifies the amount of GRINDAMYL® A to be used when adjusting a given falling number to 250. It is both highly important and necessary to consider which concentration of GRINDAMYL® A to use depending on the dosage equipment. GRINDAMYL® A is widely used by the bakery industry as an alternative to malt flour containing cereal alpha-amylase. Two

Flour standardisation using GRINDAMYL® A

As flour is a natural product, the content of alpha-amylase varies depending on several factors such as growth and weather conditions of the crop. Change in quality due to this can be overcome by supplementing the flour with fungal alpha-amylase GRINDAMYL® A at the mill. This standardisation provides the necessary basic baking properties to the flour. • The GRINDAMYL® A provides the following benefits: • Flour improvement due to starch modification. • Higher gas production giving increased volume. • Improved crust colour due to Maillard browning • Improved flavor due to the Maillard reactions In order to measure the level of alpha-amylase activity in flour, different analytical methods are used. The falling number method (Hagberg) is the common standard to determine the level of endogenous enzyme activity in the flour. A high falling number indicates low naturally occurring alpha-amylase, a low number indicating high alpha-amylase activity. The optimum falling number is considered to be 250-300. A high falling number can be adjusted by the addition of GRINDAMYL® A. However, sprouted wheat results in flour with 40 | October 2016 - Milling and Grain

Figure 1: Pan bread produced from flour with varying levels of enzyme activity expressed as falling number

Figure 2: Fungal amylase addition chart GRINDAMYL® A 1000