The chemistry of the strength of wheat flour

Abstract

Wheat owes its enormous importance to certain physical properties which are absent in the flours of other cereals, chief among which is the capacity of making a coherent dough on the addition of water. Different wheats make loaves of different size and texture, a strong wheat being denned by Humphries and Biffen(1) as one which yields flour capable of making large well-piled loaves. From this definition it is seen that the conditions required of a strong flour are two, the first being that there must be a sufficiency of sugar or other materials available for fermentation and consequent production of gas in the dough, the second, that there must be some substance present in the flour which is capable of retaining a sufficiency of the gas so generated. The constituent of wheat flour in virtue of which its dough possesses this quantity of gas retaining power is the gluten. Many workers have attempted to explain strength in terms of the relative amounts of gliadin and glutenin in the gluten, or on the percentage of gliadin in the flour.