Amount of damaged starch in laboratory and production grinding flour

Due to the different approach to the Russian and European flour milling process in Russia, the amount of damaged starch (SC) at flour mills is rarely controlled. This issue needs a comprehensive study, since the indicator of damaged starch is of great importance: its assessment allows determining the intended purpose of flour (bread baking, confectionery and pasta production). Manage the flour-grinding process in terms of monitoring the operation of the mill rolls during grinding, namely, checking their parallelism and wear, optimizing the gap and pressure. Flour with a high content of damaged starch should not be used for the same purpose as flour with a low content of damaged starch. Also, the assessment of the damaged starch index allows improving the dough yield by selecting the optimal water absorption coefficient (water absorption), optimizing the volume, color and shelf life of the finished flour products. At the initial stage, the purpose of the study was to identify the relationship between the amount of damaged starch and flour quality indicators, as well as the rheological properties of dough from laboratory flour and industrial grinding, and to further clarify the level of damaged starch on a large number of samples of flour of different quality according to its intended purpose. The available literature data on this issue are contradictory. The amount of damaged starch in flour was determined on a damaged starch analyzer. The following were also determined: the quantity and quality of gluten, the falling number, dough stability, liquefaction, water absorption of 20 samples of wheat flour of laboratory and industrial grinding. The results of the study showed that the amount of damaged starch in industrial milled flour was higher, and amounted to 20-27 UCD (average 24 UCD) versus 15-21 (average 18 UCD) in laboratory milled flour. A correlation was found only in industrial milling flour between damaged starch and the falling number (0.632), liquefaction (0.781) and water absorption (0.690). In industrial flour, with an increase in the amount of damaged starch, there was an increase in water absorption and liquefaction of the dough, which is consistent with the literature data; there was no clear decrease in dough stability. In the flour of laboratory grinding, the dependences between the indicators are insignificant.