Monitoring Flour Performance in Bread Making

A methodology to monitor flour performance in industrial bread-making based on evaluation of rheological and chemical properties of flour, as well as near infrared (NIR) spectra, is presented. The approach considers Multivariate Control Charts for both kinds of measurements, developed on flour batches employed in production. It can be adopted at the Millers laboratories, where rheological flours properties are routinely determined, to monitor flour quality; as well as, at the Bakeries plants, where NIR spectra of every flour batch entering the production can be acquired.Moreover, the variation of protein subunits in flour batches is discussed comparatively with flours properties and bread quality. Overall, flour batches leading to lousy performance can be individuated and they also show a non-optimal protein profile.This is of particular interest from the point of view of assessing flour workability and to rationalize it in terms of flour features. Finally, NIR potentiality allows considering on-line implementation in the control of incoming raw materials.