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While 'white' refined flours of various types and grades are commonly used in the manufacture of bakery products, it is possible to produce most goods using 'brown' whole grain flours in direct replacement, except for some adjustment in ingredients. These flours can be divided in to three categories:
Wheat meals: These are flours obtained from various streams in the roller milling process. They are produced by an admixture of wheat bran to lower-grade white flour in such proportions as to comply with the legal requirement of 0·6 per cent fiber on dry weight bases. For flour confectionery purposes the bran should be finely ground to produce a fine wheat meal.
Whole meal: As the name implies, these are flours obtained by grinding the whole of the wheat grain to a fine powder. Finely ground flour is best for use in flour confectionery.
Germ Meals: Germ meals contain an admixture of wheat germ to white flour.
Multigrain or composite or alternative flours: These are made by adding other cereal grains such as millets, maize, rye, sesame seeds or malted barley to wheat flour. They are used for multigrain bread, rolls and confectionery.
Bread making flour: Bread making flour should have the following characteristics
- Protein should be of good quality, and should give gluten of necessary strength, stability, extensibility and gas-retaining properties. Generally, hard wheats are high in protein. Bread flours should contain in excess of 10.50 per cent good quality protein and not more than that of 0.10 per cent ash. Bread flour should have high absorption and good mixing tolerance which means prolonged mixing without break down of gluten.
- Gassing power must be adequate. Flour should have sufficient damaged starch to provide enough sugar for the yeast to feed on during fermentation and/ or proof periods.
Biscuits flours: There are four main types of biscuits flours such as
- Short dough: The type of flour is not critical as gluten development is not needed
- Hard sweet: Low protein flours with weak, extensible gluten are used.
- Hard crackers: contain mainly bread making wheat flours with protein content in the range of 9.00 to 10.50 per cent.
- Wafer: Low protein soft flours are specified as gluten must not develop in the batter during mixing.
- Self raising flour: These contain baking powder (Sodium bicarbonate) are made of soft wheats containing protein in the range of 8.50 and 10.50 per cent.
Cake flours:is soft white flour, has lower gluten contentthan whole wheat pastry flour.It gives a delicate and tender texture. Cake flours should contain less than 10.00 per cent protein and 0.40 per cent ash, and should have water absorption capacity. Almost all cake flour is bleachedto lighten its pale beige color. Bleached cake flour toughens theprotein molecules, enabling the flour to carry more than its weight in sugar.
Durum flour:is a by-product of millingsemolinaflour that has the high protein content. As a result, it makes tough dough that can stretch and expand and is generally used for pasta preparation.
Farina:Also called as cream of wheat flour is endosperm meal which is milled to a fine granular consistency and then sifted.
Fortified flour:refers to all-purpose flour, usually wheat, to which nutrients like thiamine, riboflavin and niacin, removed during refining, have been added back.
Graham flour:Hard whole wheat flour with a coarse and flaky outer bran layer and finely ground germ add texture to all baked goods, most commonly used in crackers.
Gluten flour: Gluten flour is white flour mixed with concentrated wheat protein. Gluten contains high gluten between 40 to 80 per cent protein, suitable in bagels, thin crust pizza, hard rolls, hearth breads and heavy breads such as those with extra bran, raisins, nuts and sugar.
Instantized flour:is quick-mixing flour which mixes very quickly into liquids and produces lump-free batters and gravies.
Pastry flour: It is low-gluten flour used in delicate cakes and pastries.It absorbs less liquid, suitable for use inbiscuits,pancakes,pie crust, cookies, muffins and brownies, pound and sheet cakes.
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