Basic qualities of flour: definition, evaluation of indicators and norms

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Indispensable products in the human diet are flour products. It is widely used in the bakery, pasta, food industry and cooking. The product obtained by grinding grain to a powder is called flour. Most often, crops such as wheat and rye are used for its manufacture, much less often - other grains and legumes. The prepared product is classified by type, type, variety. Today we have prepared material for you, from which you will learn how to choose the right flour for the main qualities.

Useful information

Flour, which is obtained from different types of grain, is characterized by different consumer properties. It differs in the content of chemicals, color, in addition, it provides for various uses. The quality of flour directly depends on what kind of grain it is made from, therefore it is permissible to use only high-quality raw materials. Please note that defectstaste, smell and color of the grain are transferred to the finished product. The use of germinated, self-heated grain damaged by pests will significantly worsen the consumer characteristics of flour. Such a product will have reduced gluten properties, it is characterized by very poor quality.

Determining the quality of flour

Before we begin to determine the quality, I would like to give one piece of advice: do not buy a large amount of flour at once, just buy a couple of kilograms, prepare a trial product, and then decide whether you need to purchase this particular product in the future or no. We offer several simple ways to check the quality of flour:

1. Pour a little flour into the palm of your hand and squeeze it well. In the event that it is dry and of high quality, it will not leave fingerprints. If, after you open your palm, a lump forms from the flour, then the product is wet. In the future, during storage, caking of the product is possible, it is recommended to smell such flour, usually it smells of mustiness or acid. In order to better feel this smell, you can warm the flour with your breath or add a little water to it and rub it with your fingers.
2. Put a small amount of already smell-tested flour into your mouth and taste it. Good quality flour should have a delicate, sweet and pleasant taste characteristic of it. Stale flour gives off a bitter, unpleasant moldy taste. If the chewed product becomes viscous, it means that it has good gluten.
3. We offer this method of checking the freshness of flour: knead the dough from a small amount of raw materials and water, from which we roll a small ball. If it has a dirty gray color, it means that the product is not fresh.
4. The ball made from the dough is washed under running cold water, if the remaining mass becomes sticky, sticky and stretches by about 25 cm, this means that the flour has good gluten and the products made from it will not float.

Wheat flour quality standard

Organoleptic evaluation of the product is carried out by a commodity specialist. First of all, smell, color, taste, mineral impurities are taken into account. Good-quality raw materials cannot have a moldy, sour, bitter or musty taste. If for some reason the flour does not meet the requirements of the standard, then it is not allowed for food use. The quality indicators of wheat flour by the color of different varieties of wheat raw materials can have the following shades:

• v/s, I grade - white, white with a yellow tint;
• II grade - white, white with a gray tint;
• wholemeal flour is white (shade can be gray or yellow) and tangible particles of grain shells.

Consider the definition of mineral impurities in flour. When chewing a quality product, the crunch on the teeth is not felt. For baking, flour is considered the best, which has particles of uniform size. The amount of gluten in premium flour should not be lower than 24%, I - 25%, II - 21%, upholstery - 18%. The ash content of flour is characterized by the ratio of bran and endosperm in it, which means that the higher the flour grade, the lower the bran content in it, and therefore the lower ash content. The ash content rate for wheat flour should correspond to the following indicators: grain flour - 0.6%, premium - 0.55%, I - 0.75, II - 1.25%. Infestation of products with pests is unacceptable.

Quality requirements

Flour of all yields and varieties is necessarily standardized and has a large number of indicators that are divided into two groups:

1. The first group includes characteristics, indicators, numerical expression, independent of the output and grade of flour. According to these indicators, the same requirements are imposed on flour of various grades: humidity, smell, crunch, the presence of harmful impurities, pest infestation.
2. The second group includes indicators that are normalized for different yields from a variety individually: color, quantity and quality of raw gluten (for wheat raw materials), grinding size, ash content.

Flour acidity

Fresh flour is characterized by low acidity, during storage in the product, due to the action of microorganisms and enzymes, some organic substances are decomposed and acids are formed. Therefore, we can say that the acidity of raw materials depends on their freshness. It is expressed in degrees. Different varieties have their own indicators: premium wheat, I - 3-3, 5˚, wallpaper, II - 4, 5-5˚.

Humidity

Noted thatdry flour is better stored, and the yield of bread from it is much greater. If its moisture content increases by 1%, then the yield of bread decreases by 2%, respectively. The moisture content of the product depends entirely on the moisture content of the grain from which it was obtained. In flour, it is lower for the reason that during the grinding process, water evaporates from it. Please note that flour moisture content may vary depending on storage conditions. If it is stored in a damp room, the humidity rises, respectively, in a dry room it decreases. This indicator of flour should not exceed 9-10%, for wheat - 15%.

Impurity content

Sometimes harmful impurities can be found in the grain: smut, mustard, cockle, ergot, elm. If they are not removed, they will be crushed along with the grain. Their content in flour has strict restrictions, for example, the content of harmful impurities should not exceed 0.05%, cockle - 0.1%, tie and mustard - no more than 0.04%. However, we note that during grain grinding, harmful impurities are also crushed, and therefore their presence is difficult to determine even in laboratory conditions. That is why their content is determined even before grinding, and the results of the analyzes are indicated in quality certificates or certificates.

Ash content

According to this indicator, one can judge the grade of flour. This can be explained by the fact that the aleurone layer, shells and germ contain more ash than mealy grains. The highest grades of flour contain a small amount of bran, so they differ from other varieties in their lower ash content. Conversely, lowerflour varieties have more shells, germ, aleurone layer, and therefore higher ash content. It should be noted that the ash content of flour also depends on the place where the grain grows, type, etc. Therefore, two samples of flour with the same ash content can differ significantly from each other in terms of the presence of bran in the flour.

Flour of the first group

From the amount of raw gluten in flour, it is divided into three groups: I - up to 28%, II - from 28-36%, III - up to 40%. From flour of group I, low-elastic dough is produced: rich and shortbread, from 28-35% - biscuit, custard, waffle, 36-40% - puff, yeast. The following requirements are imposed on the quality indicators of flour of this group:

1. Humidity. This indicator in this product should not exceed 15%. If the flour has a high humidity, it is poorly stored, moldy, self-heating and sour easily. Flour values below 15% are also undesirable, for example, flour with a moisture content of 9-13% becomes rancid during storage.
2. Freshness. Flour must have a slight specific flour smell. Other odors may indicate that there are certain degrees of defective flour. Fresh flour has a bland taste, but with prolonged chewing it turns into a sweetish one (the result of the action of saliva on starch). If the taste of flour is sour, sweet or bitter, then the product is made from defective grain or it has deteriorated during storage.
3. Crunch. This indicator is a defect that is unacceptable in flour. Cause it- production of products from grain, which was not sufficiently purified from mineral impurities. Another reason may be the grinding of flour with improperly installed or poor-quality millstones. In addition, crunching may appear after transporting bags of flour in vehicles with inadequate sanitary conditions. Storage in poorly cleaned warehouses also leads to this defect. Please note: it is also transferred to the baked product.
4. Infestation with pests. Flour is a semi-finished product for the preparation of finished products, so it is unacceptable to have signs of infection in it. If any type of pest is found in the flour, it is declared non-standard and removed from production.

Quality evaluation

In this section of the article we will talk about how the quality of flour is assessed. Acceptance by the quantity of flour is carried out by weighing the bags, by quality - by such organoleptic indicators as taste, smell, infestation with pests, color, texture. Humidity is checked in a way already known to us - by squeezing a little flour in a fist. In the event that it crumbles, the humidity is normal, and if it gathers in a lump, it is increased. Flour Quality Check:

1. Smell. 20 g of flour is poured over 200 ml of hot water, the water is drained, and then the flour is smelled.
2. Color. 10-15 g of the product is poured onto a flat surface, then leveled with a glass plate.
3. Taste, the presence of impurities. Check by chewing a small amount of raw materials.
4. Infestation with pests. Flouris sifted through a sieve made of wire mesh, the screening remaining on it is inspected.
5. Tick infestation. The flour is lightly pressed so that a smooth smooth surface is obtained. After one minute, carefully examine the surface of the flour with a magnifying glass to identify grooves and swelling.