Technological Assessment of Chestnut Flour Doughs Regarding to Doughs from Other Commercial Flours and Formulations

Abstract

The technological assessment of chestnut flour doughs was studied using Mixolab® apparatus, establishing a comparison with gluten (soft, hard and whole wheat) and gluten-free (rice and yellow corn) flour doughs as well as corn starch pastrymaking and breadmaking formulations. This equipment measures the torque in function of temperature and time, firstly at 30 °C (mixing curve) and secondly the mixing during heating (4 °C/min up to 90 °C) and cooling (4 °C/min up to 50 °C) steps (complete curve). Different hydrations of doughs ranging from 41.4% to 68.5% (flour basis) were necessary to reach the torque of 1.10 ± 0.07 Nm. Parameters of mixing such as water absorption, development time, stability and mixing tolerance index were obtained. Parameters of heating and cooling cycle related to weakening of proteins, gelatinization starch, amylase activity and starch retrogradation as well as range of gelatinization temperatures were also determined. Chestnut flour showed suitable parameters in the mixing stage such as arrival time (1.93 ± 0.1 min), stability (12.1 ± 0.4 min) and departure time (14.0 ± 0.3 min). In the heating cycle, chestnut flour exhibited close behaviour to soft wheat flour with cooking stability of 1.12 ± 0.01 min and seems to be suitable for pastrymaking products. Finally, in the cooling cycle the behaviour revealed that products of this flour can present problems of staling and crumbs firmness due to high values (2.88 Nm) of C5 parameter.