Wheat milling and flour quality evaluations

Wheat is the most versatile cereal due to the capacity of its storage proteins to interact and develop the gluten network, the framework of all bakery products. Due to the presence of a deep crease in the kernel, flour is extracted by a sequence of several breaking, sieving and size-reducing passages, known as the milling diagram. This process makes it possible to contemporaneously separate the bran and germ regions and to break the endosperm cells into a very fine product, suitable for a rapid hydration and gluten development. The milling yield and the flour refinement are strictly related both to the milling conditions and the wheat varieties. The latter highly influence flour technological performances (measured by several instrumental tests) and bread characteristics. Besides refined flours, more and more attention is given to whole-wheat flours, obtained by the inclusion of bran and germ fractions, presently considered as merely by-products, despite their richness in several bioactive compounds.