Strategies for Determining Gluten-free Flour Quality.

The gluten-free market holds a substantial share in the bakery market, with an expected cumulative growth of about 10% until 2025. From bread to cake and everything in between, there is room for innovation in the market. Producing a quality and consistent gluten-free product hinges on the ingredients used. The replacement solutions available today are vast and varied. However, they all need to fill in for key gluten functionality, as well as be held to a standard of quality and reliability.

How can you test the quality of gluten-free ingredients? Find out in our free technical paper!

Getting started: finding replacements for gluten

Gluten provides three key functions in baking formulas:

  • Network: the gluten protein cluster forms an elastic network that provides stretching and extensibility to the baked goods.
  • Functionality: gluten aids in dough formation by reacting with water to form gas pockets during the mixing process. The elasticity of the network aids in raising the dough during proofing and baking by entrapping the air. The network elasticity aids to avoid dough collapse in these processing steps.
  • Texture: the gluten network provides a unique texture to the baked products due to the earlier discussed properties above.

Checking gluten-free flour quality

While developing gluten-free products, finding a single ingredient replacement is extremely difficult to provide the same functionality. Furthermore, gluten-free products are also vulnerable to quality variability and limitations in quality control tools. Here are some necessary steps to consider for developing successful gluten-free products:

  • Functional alternative raw material
  • Consistent quality of raw material
  • Formulation adaptation for variation in raw material
  • Achieving optimum water level depending on mixing and baking properties
  • Improving product quality using dough strengthening enzymes
  • Analyzing rheological properties of doughs and mixes

Learn more about gluten-free flour quality tests and control in our free paper. Download it here.