New Flour Keeps Bread Fresh

[Guest guest]

This was out of our farm newspaper today (The Farmer's Exchange,

Topeka, Indiana, Friday, March 29, 2002, page 9):

New Flour Keeps Bread Fresh

Agricultural Research Service scientists and cooperators have bred

a new kind of durum wheat, called " waxy wheat, " whose flour may give

rise to reduced-fat bread.

In commercial baking, vegetable oil or other types of fat often

are added to dough to produce loaves of bread with improved crumb

softness, volume and texture. Shortening also keeps the bread from

becoming stale too quickly during storage. But vegetable shortening is

high in trans fatty acids and can be a costly ingredient to add when

millions of loaves are being produced, according to chemist Doug

Doehlert at the ARS Red Rivet Valley Agricultural Research Center in

Fargo, N.D.

There, he and North Dakota State University associates show that

flour from the new waxy durum wheat can replace vegetable shortening

without losing the desired properties the shortening confers to bread.

A single bread loaf might have two tablespoons of shortening, so

replacing that with WDW flour would save about 26 grams of fat, or 234

calories. Doehlert credits the flour's fat replacing capacity to a

unique type of starch that differs from that in most bread wheat

cultivars.

Starch is a polymer, or chain, of glucose molecules containing

both amylose and amylopectin. Amylose is the straight-chain-form of

this polymer, while amylo pectin is the branched form. Most wheat

cultivars have about 24 percent amylose and 76% amylopectin. But WDW

starch is nearly 100 percent amylopectin.

WDW flour works best as a shortening substitute when it comprises

20 per cent of a dough formulation, according to Doehlert, at the

center's cereal crops research unit.

In trials, quarter-pound loaves of the experimental bread had the

same softness, texture and volume as those containing 100 per cent

bread wheat flour and 3.25 grams of shortening. And in tests for

freshness, the WDW bread stayed much softer than the non waxy wheat

bread after five days of storage.

Doehlert, along with ARS chemist Grant and NDSU associates

Monisha Bhattacharya, Sofia Erazo-Castrejon and McMullen, have

been developing, evaluating and testing applications for the new WDW

flour for about five years.

[Guest guest]

>Most wheat

>cultivars have about 24 percent amylose and 76% amylopectin. But WDW

>starch is nearly 100 percent amylopectin.

If this becomes widespread it will dramatically increase the incidence of

IBD, Crones, UC, etc.

Those fools.

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