Cereals & Grains Association
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Development of a small-scale wheat testing regime for assessment of bread-making quality
C. BAKER (1), S. Penson (1) (1) Campden BRI, Chipping Campden, United Kingdom.

The desired quality for wheat as a raw material is dependent upon the end?product and the processes requirements. For bread-making wheat, an assessment of the quality is relevant to the stakeholders throughout the supply chain from plant breeders to bakers as it may allow the selection of potential bread-making varieties in the early stages of a wheat breeding programme for the former and informs the latter on the functionality and baking performance of new varieties. Currently an assessment is likely to involve a number of chemical and rheological tests followed by test baking at the 400 g or 800 g loaf scale. Although these tests provide a definitive measure of quality, a baking assessment requires the milling of 2 kg of grain minimum and this amount of material is not always available. AHDB?Cereals and Oilseeds funded the evaluation of a set of small-scale test methods which require a significantly smaller amount of material (around 100 g of grain). The approach involves a size exclusion HPLC method and a small-scale dough rheology method (using a reomixer). By combining the data generated using both methods it has been possible to predict the performance of experimental material (work previously carried out). Subsequently, Campden BRI has developed a small-scale baking method that reliably correlates baking performance with large?scale test bake. Combining both the small-scale testing and the small-scale baking has the potential to reliably predict bread-making quality with around 100 g of wheat.