Essential products in the human diet are flour products. It is widely used in the bakery, pasta, food industry and culinary. The product, which is obtained by grinding grain to a powder state, is called flour. Most often, such crops as wheat and rye are used for its production, much less often - other cereals and legumes. The prepared product is classified by type, type, grade. Today we have prepared for you material from which you will learn how to choose the right flour according to its main qualities.
Helpful information
Flour, which is obtained from different types of grain, is characterized by various 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 defects in taste, smell and color of the grain are transmitted to the finished product. Significantly worsen the consumer characteristics of flour, the use of sprouted, self-warmed, damaged by pests grain. Such a product will be with reduced gluten properties, it is characterized by a very low quality.
Determination of the quality of flour
Before we begin to determine the quality, I want to give one piece of advice: do not immediately buy a large amount of flour, 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 not. We offer several simple ways to check the quality of flour:
- Pour a little flour into your palm and squeeze it well. In the event that it is dry and of high quality, there will be no fingerprints on it. If, after you unclenched your palm, a lump formed 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 the smell of mustiness or acid emanates from it. In order to better smell this smell, you can warm the flour with your breath or add a little water to it and grind it with your fingers.
- Put a small amount of flour already tested for smell in the mouth and determine its taste. A flour of good quality should have a delicate, sweetish and pleasant taste peculiar to it. Stale flour gives a bitter, unpleasant taste to the mold. If a chewed product is made viscous, it means that it has good gluten.
- We offer such a method for checking the freshness of flour: from a small amount of raw materials and water, knead the dough, from which we roll a small ball. If it has a dirty gray color, it means that the product is stale.
- We wash the ball prepared from the dough under running cold water, if the remaining mass is sticky, sticky and stretches about 25 cm, this means that the flour has good gluten and products prepared from it will not float.
Wheat flour quality standard
Organoleptic evaluation of the product is carried out by the merchandiser. First of all, smell, color, taste, mineral impurities are taken into account. A benign raw material 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 various varieties of raw materials from wheat can have the following shades:
- premium, grade I - white, white with a yellow tint;
- II grade - white, white with a gray tint;
- white flour (the shade may be gray or yellow) and palpable particles of grain shells.
Consider the determination of mineral impurities in flour. When chewing a quality product, a crunch on the teeth is not felt. For baking, flour is considered the best, which has particles that are uniform in size. The amount of premium gluten 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, this means that the higher the grade of flour, the lower the bran content in it, and therefore the ash content is lower. The ash content for wheat flour should correspond to the following indicators: grain flour - 0.6%, w / s - 0.55%, I - 0.75, II - 1.25%. Pest infestation 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:
- The first group includes characteristics, indicators, numerical expression, not depending on the yield and grade of flour. According to these indicators, the same requirements are met for flour of different varieties: humidity, smell, crunch, the presence of harmful impurities, pest infestation.
- The second group includes indicators that are standardized for different exit from the variety individually: the color, quantity and quality of raw gluten (for raw wheat), coarseness, 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 decompose and form acids. Therefore, we can say that the acidity of raw materials depends on its freshness. It is expressed in degrees. For different varieties, there are indicators: wheat premium, I - 3-3.5ห, wallpaper, II - 4.5-5ห.
Humidity
It is noted that dry flour is better stored, and the yield of bread from it is much greater. If its humidity rises by 1%, then the yield of bread decreases accordingly by 2%. 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 the moisture content of the flour may depend on storage conditions. If it is stored in a damp room, the humidity rises, respectively, in the dry - decreases. This indicator of flour should not exceed 9-10%, for wheat - 15%.
Impurity content
Sometimes harmful impurities can be found in grain: smut, mustard, cockle, ergot, and crochet. If they are not removed, they will be bold with the grain. Their content in flour has severe restrictions, for example, the content of harmful impurities should not exceed 0.05%, cockle - 0.1%, and beetroot and mustard - not more than 0.04%. However, we note that when grinding grain, harmful impurities are also crushed, and therefore their presence is difficult to determine even in laboratory conditions. That is why their content is established even before grinding, and the results of the analyzes are indicated in quality certificates or certificates.
Ash content
By this indicator, you can judge the grade of flour. This can be explained by the fact that the aleurone layer, shells, and the germ contain a greater amount of ash than mealy grain. Higher grades of flour contain a small amount of bran, because they differ from other varieties in lower ash content. Conversely, lower grades of flour have a greater number of shells, germ, aleurone layer, and therefore higher ash content. It should be noted that the ash content of flour also depends on the place of grain growth, type, etc. Therefore, two samples of flour, having the same ash content, can significantly differ from each other in the presence of bran in the flour.
Flour of the first group
The amount of raw gluten in flour is divided into three groups: I - up to 28%, II - from 28-36%, III - up to 40%. Low-elastic dough is made from flour of group I: butter and shortbread dough, from 28-35% - biscuit, custard, waffle, 36-40% - puff, yeast. The following requirements are imposed on the quality indicators of flour of this group:
- Humidity. This indicator in this product should not exceed 15%. If the flour has a high humidity, it is poorly stored, moldy, self-warms and easily sour. Indicators of flour below 15% are also undesirable, for example, flour having a moisture content of 9-13% becomes rancid during storage.
- Freshness. Flour must have a faint, specific, floury smell. Other odors may indicate that there are varying degrees of defectiveness of the flour. Fresh flour has a fresh taste, but with prolonged chewing it turns into sweetish (the result of the action of saliva on starch). If the taste of the flour is sour, sweet or bitter, then the product is made from defective grain or it deteriorated during storage.
- Crunch. This indicator is a defect unacceptable in flour. The reason for it is the development of products from grain, which was not sufficiently purified from mineral impurities. Another reason may be the grinding of flour with improperly installed or low-quality millstones. In addition, crunching may occur after transporting bags of flour in machines with inadequate sanitary conditions. Storage in poorly cleaned storage facilities also leads to this defect. Please note: it is also transmitted to the baked product.
- Pest infestation. 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 kind of pests is found in the flour, it is declared non-standard and removed from production.
Quality control
In this section of the article, we will talk about how flour quality is evaluated. Acceptance by the amount of flour is carried out by weighing the bags, by quality - by such organoleptic indicators as taste, smell, pest infestation, color, texture. Humidity is checked by the method 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 is collected in a lump, it is elevated. Checking the quality of flour:
- Smell. 20 g of flour is poured into 200 ml of hot water, the water is drained, and then the flour is sniffed.
- Color. 10-15 g of the product is poured on a flat surface, then leveled with a glass plate.
- Taste, the presence of impurities. Check by chewing a small amount of raw material.
- Pest infestation. Flour is sifted through a sieve made of wire mesh, the remaining screenings are inspected.
- Tick โโinfestation. The flour is lightly pressed so that a smooth, even surface is obtained. After one minute, using a magnifying glass, carefully examine the surface of the flour to detect grooves and swelling.