This article presents the results of a study of the quality indicators of flour streams, which affect the formation of the water absorption capacity of the final flour. The studies were carried out on five mills with a productivity of 60 to 300 tons per 24 hours. With the help of an original technique for removing the quantitative balance of the milling process, the yield of each individual flour stream and the yield of the final flour were determined, which depended on the productivity of the mill and varied from 75.9-76.1% – for mills with low productivity to 79.0-80.6% – for mills with productivity above 150 tones per 24 hours. Significant changes in the quality indicators of flour streams have been established. During milling at the mill plant with productivity of 150 t / 24 h ash content increased from 0.39% to 2.21%, protein content – from 11.0% to 17.4%, starch damage – from 17.6 UCD to 32.5 UCD. As result the water absorption capacity increases during the milling process from 54.0 to 69.6%. The variation in ash content, protein content, starch damage and other properties of the mill streams are due to the anatomical parts they come from, as result it influence the quality of the final flour. A simple correlation analysis carried out made it possible to evaluate the effect of ash content, protein content, and damaged starch content on the evolution of water absorption capacity. The variations of starch damage and ash content in the flour streams seems to be the principal factor of the increase in water absorption variation, while protein content has the least influence. Despite fluctuations in flour quality indicators on individual systems, it was found that strongly determines the overall quality of the final flour is the mill stream flour yield. That’s why optimization of grinding and sieving modes of systems (B1, B2, C1, C2, B3, Siz1) which have flour streams with the highest yield and the greatest impact on the grinding process is a fundamental step in achieving the set values for the final flour quality indicators. Knowledge and understanding of the patterns of change on individual systems of values of flour yield and their quality indicators that affect water absorption capacity will allow to more effectively manage the water absorption capacity. This will make it possible to optimize the properties of the dough according to the requirements of specific technological lines and to regulate the quality of the finished product at bakery and confectionery enterprises.

The article presents and briefly discusses the benefits of consuming wholemeal products, including wholemeal flour. The production technologies of wholemeal flour have been classified, and their advantages and disadvantages analysed. The academic community’s research results are contradictory: researchers disagree about whether recombined wholemeal flour is higher in its biological and nutritional value than ordinary flour or not, nor their findings allow definitely recommending this or that technology of its production as effective. Therefore, it is important to develop a new technology of producing wholemeal flour for flour mills. This technology would incorporate the advantages of existing grinding methods and at the same time minimise their negative impact on the gluten complex quality and the nutrient content. The purpose of the study is to give reasons for the structure of the combined technological scheme of milling and the optimum modes of wholemeal flour production. The properties of industrially produced wholemeal flour samples have been studied. The findings allow concluding that the quality of these flour samples varies greatly. This is due to differences in the manufacturing technologies and the vagueness of the very concept of wholemeal flour, which should be defined by regulations along with quality requirements prescribed. Such parameters as ash content and flour particles size (which directly depend on how well the milling scheme is build up and whether all anatomical particles get into the flour) have a significant effect on the baking performance. The laboratory milling was performed following the principle of 100% grinding of grain. Three variants of the combined technological scheme of milling have been studied. The best baking performance resulted from using four roller systems for the primary grinding of the bran products and two millstone systems for the final milling. This allowed obtaining wholemeal flour with smaller particles: the residue on sieve No. 067 was 1.4%, and the outsiftings from sieve No. 38 were 40%. Using more grinding systems is impractical: it will allow obtaining even finer particles, but milling will become too energy-intensive and material-consuming