Wheat Flour

FLOUR:

How should bread flour be?

Flour is the name given to the fine powder obtained by grinding grains. It is the basic ingredient of many foods, especially bread and pastries. Generally, the powder obtained from wheat is simply called flour.

Today, the most bread is made from wheat flour in our country. White flour is obtained by separating the hulls and bran of the wheat milled in modern mills at a rate of 72 percent and below. If the bran rate is 72 percent and above, brown flour is formed. Brown flour is naturally more nutritious. Because the vitamins, minerals, oil and fiber in the hull and germ of the wheat have not been lost. However, since whole wheat flour contains seed germ oil, it gradually sours and this makes it difficult to store the flour for a long time.

It is the gluten complex that forms the 'network' in the texture of the crust and hardens with the heat of baking, which gives the bread its flexibility, fluffiness and light consistency. Glutamine and prolamin, which are proteins found in wheat flour, provide elastic and soft dough with the addition of water and kneading. The gases formed by the added yeast facilitate the spreading of the gluten complex evenly throughout the dough and ensure that the dough rises. When the risen dough is placed in the oven at high temperature, the gas that expands under the effect of heat makes the dough rise a little more and ensures that the inside of the dough is cooked. The quality and nutritional value of the bread depend on the type of flour used in these processes, the gluten complex formed and the baking temperature.

Wheat Flour; It is the product obtained by grinding wheat that has been cleaned of foreign substances and tempered in accordance with the (TS 2974) technique. There is a close relationship between the quality of wheat and the quality of the flour it is ground. For this reason, the quality of the wheat must be known in order to determine the amount of flour. Only 3 of the 14 types of wheat grown in the world have economic importance. These types are,
Tr. Aestivum Bread Wheats
Tr. Compactum Biscuit Topbaş Wheat

Tr. Durum Durum Wheat

Components of Wheat Flour; When you look at wheat flour, you may think that it has a white and homogeneous structure. In fact, wheat flour consists of many components and each component has an effect on the bread quality of the flour. Each wheat flour may differ from the other. The biggest component of wheat is starch. Although it is dry and powdery, the water content of wheat flour is quite high. The protein part of wheat flour consists of proteins with many different properties. Changes in the bread quality of wheat flour are mostly due to differences in the amount and quality of protein. A large part of wheat flour proteins have the feature of forming gluten (core) in the dough. The other part becomes liquid in the dough. Technically, only the proteins that form gluten are important and their properties and effects can be listed as follows.

We can examine flour production in factories in 8 stages:

1. Receiving and storing wheat
2. Cleaning and separating wheat from foreign materials
3. Blending process
4. Washing wheat
5. Tempering wheat
6. Grinding wheat
7. Sifting
8. Packaging and storage
Wheats are generally classified into 3 groups according to their botanical structure:

a- Durum wheat (Triticum Durum)
b- Bread wheat (Triticum Vulgare)
c- Topbaş or Biscuit wheat (Triticum Compactum)

Wheat grain is mainly divided into three parts:

a) Shell (Pericarp-Bran); 12% of the average grain,
b) Germ (Embryo-dwarf); 3% of the average grain,
c) Grain interior (Endosperm-floury part); It constitutes 85% of the average grain. It is the most important part for flour. The flour used as human food in wheat grain is obtained from the endosperm (inside the grain).

The amount of water in Turkish wheat varies between 8-14%.

The building to be used as a storage should be a dry, airy and bright place that does not get damp. At least 1.5 m2 of area should be calculated for one ton of product. The humidity rate of wheat in the storage area should be below 14%. If the humidity rate of the grain exceeds 14%, heating and molding accelerate. This causes the product to deteriorate in a short time and become unusable. The best temperature for storage is +4 ºC.

Grinding of Wheat

While grinding in the classical sense is thought of as just breaking the grain, its current meaning is; The separation of endosperm substances from wheat bran and the gradual grinding of the endosperm, which is achieved by a rather complex system of rollers, sieves, chasers and other machines.

The rested, cleaned wheat mash is broken with the help of cooled steel cylinders called rollers. The grinding process is carried out with the help of the speed difference between the rollers and the "teeth" on the rollers. The flour is not ground in a single roller. It is done step by step and sieved each time and the thin parts are separated, the thick parts are ground again.