Manufacture of Pasta Discussion

•What do you expect will happen if you use bread flour for the manufacture of pasta?

•If you did the Falling number test on a flour and the result was a very low value, what do you expect will happen if you use this flour for (i) bread (ii) cookies

Pasta-Noodles-Cookies
Summary, Questions and
Activity
Costas Stathopoulos
FDSC378
Pasta and (wheat) noodles
These are products formed from a dough, but not leavened.
Ideally they are made from durum wheat.
Formulations are simple and for pasta comprise semolina,
water, (eggs), (spinach), while for noodles flour, water, salt,
(egg).
Sizes and shapes vary greatly (spaghetti, macaroni, lasagne,
tortellini, elbows etc…)
Pasta
Semolina is durum wheats’ coarse flour.
Endosperms of durum wheats are high in carotenoids, so pasta
gets a yellow colour.
Overgrinding the semolina reduces the quality of the pasta,
reducing its resistance to overcooking.
Pasta manufacture
A pasta dough is made by mixing water and
semolina to a final moisture of ~30%.
Mixing happens under vacuum to prevent air
getting trapped in the dough.
Trapped air interferes with the colour
perception, and also makes pasta weaker.
Pasta manufacture
Drying
Heat, moisture, and drying time are strictly regulated.
The drying period differs for the various types of pasta.
Three hours for elbow macaroni – 12 hours for spaghetti.
If the pasta is dried too quickly it will break and if it is dried
too slowly, the chance for spoilage increases.
The oxygen level is also regulated.
Careful handling of the pasta during the drying period is
crucial
Noodles
• Noodles are made from flour rather than semolina, and in
some countries contain eggs.
• Noodles must be free of rancidity (even if pre-fried), they
must cook rapidly, and must be holding together while
cooking (sometimes this results in a chewy texture that can
be desirable in many countries).
Noodles
Biscuits Cookies Crackers
Biscuits and Cookies are flat, sweet, crisp baked goods.
Their formulations tend to have low water content, and high
sugar and fat.
Crackers are flat baked products with either bland or
savoury taste.
The production process includes mixing, forming, baking and
packing.
Cakes
Ingredients are more or less the same as with other baked
goods, but the proportion of fat, and sugar are higher.
Of significance as ingredients are the flour and the eggs.
Flour must be low protein, very fine, and almost always treated with
chlorine to prevent gluten formation (and therefore toughening).
Eggs are used as binders and emulsifiers providing nutritional value as
well as a light structure to the cakes.
Pastries
Pastries (pie-crust or puff) contain high fat, low water and
little or no sugar. Gluten formation also needs to be
prevented.
Steam trapped between the layers of gluten, and/or fat
(layered but not mixed)
between layers of paste provide tenderness and flakiness to
the product.
Quality testing
Quality of wheat and flour is different for each end product.
Quality (commercially) can be defined as ‘fulfilling the
requirements for a particular process’.
Quality testing
We can test the grain, the flour or the dough.
Grain: appearance, size, shape, smell, 1000 grain weight, protein
content, moisture content
Flour: Ash, colour, acidity, gluten content, amylograph
Dough: Farinograph, extensiograph
Summary questions
• What defines the quality of a flour?
• Why is drying important in past manufacturing?
• How are cookies biscuits and crackers different from most breads?
• Why are eggs important in cake manufacture?
• Why we want to include layers of fat in pastries?
Activity
• What do you expect will happen if you use bread flour for the
manufacture of pasta?
• If you did the Falling number test on a flour and the result was a very
low value, what do you expect will happen if you use this flour for (i)
bread (ii) cookies
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