Bread Quality of Wheat Flour by Near-Infrared Spectrophotometry: Feasibility of Modeling

Commercial bakeries need a means to measure the dough-handling and bread-making functionalitv of wheat flour during processing. The feasibility of using near-infrared (NIR) reflectance spectrophotometry for such measurement was examined. Flour from hard red spring and hard red winter wheat were tested for: water absorption, dough mixing time, dough mixing tolerance, loaf height, internal grain appearance, and overall bake score. The ability of NIR to measure protein level, and/ or starch damage, as well as positive relationships between the two and water absorption, probably made it successful for modeling water absorption. Models for the remaining five indices were less accurate due to the complexity of interactions between protein, starch, and lipids, and inadequate instrument sensitivity.