Determination of Some Flour Characteristics

Food based on cereals especially the flour as an end product has been frequently consumed all over the world. Different types of commercially available flour (wheat, oat, corn, rye, integral rye flour) were tested for several characteristics such as magnetic, microscopic, testing of carbonates in flour with hydrochloric acid and oxalic acid, determination of gluten content, pH value, moisture content, foam capacity, flour colour analysis and FT-IR analysis. The microscopic analysis with an optical microscope showed the structural properties of each flour type. The results show that colour indexes represented with values of L*, a*, and b* showed good correlation in the evaluation of milling precision and flour grading (maximum value for wheat flour, L* was 86.921). The FT-IR analysis showed the main peaks in the region of C-H, N-H, and C-N bonds. The proposed methods are easy to be handled for rapid determination of several flour characteristics such as pH value, moisture and gluten content, parameters directly connected to storage quality. Application of available less cost methods for determination of certain parameters for safety use of flour products.