Effects of plasma‐activated water and heat moisture treatment on the properties of wheat flour and dough

Abstract

Summary Plasma‐activated water (PAW) production and use is an emerging technology for enhancing product safety, extending shelf‐life and quality retention, and promoting sustainable processing. At present, it has generated considerable attention for applications to starch and flour modification. This work presents an innovative approach to wheat flour (WF) modification using PAW and heat‐moisture treatment (HMT), and compares this approach with distilled water (DW) treatment. As expected, PAW and HMT promoted flour granule clustering, increasing particle size. These treatments accelerated molecular interactions between wheat starch and non‐starch components (e.g. proteins and lipids), which eventually increased resistant starch (RS) content. Addition of modified flour (30 g) to WF positively affected its rheological properties, and closely bound water content of the dough. The gluten protein network structure in the dough suffered varying degrees of damage. In conclusion, our results showed that PAW and HMT may provide a novel beneficial method for modifying wheat flour during food processing to obtain viscoelastic wheat flour products with nutritional functions.

Changes Induced by Heat Moisture Treatment in Wheat Flour and Pasta Rheological, Physical and Starch Digestibility Properties

“…Villanueva et al [ 12 ] reported an increase of elastic and viscous moduli when microwave treated rice flour was used in gluten-free bread, explaining that the rearrangements of the amylose and amylopectin chains probably contributed to the dough strengthening. Furthermore, the increase in the visco-elastic moduli could have been promoted by the exposure of hydrophilic groups (–COOH, –NH 2 ) generated by HMT which led to a higher water-binding capacity [ 13 ].…”

“…The increase of resistant starch in treated wheat pasta compared to untreated pasta is shown in Figure 3 . Protein denaturation occurs when HMT is applied to wheat flour, with the modified molecules being able to adhere on the starch grain aggregates surface to create barriers that slow down the digestive activity of the enzymes [ 13 ]. Furthermore, the formation of amylose-lipid complexes could be another explanation for the RS content increase, since amylose has a helical shape that can encompass fat or other hydrophobic molecules of a small size [ 13 ].…”

Effect of Heat–Moisture Treatment on the Physicochemical Properties, Structure, Morphology, and Starch Digestibility of Highland Barley (Hordeum vulgare L. var. nudum Hook. f) Flour

“…HMT also promoted a densely packed aggregation structure of starch that prevented digestive enzymes from binding to starch granules. Furthermore, under low-moisture conditions, the proteins were denatured by heat and adhered to the surface of the starch granules, reducing the contact site for digestive enzymes [ 47 ]. The increase in RDS and SDS content was due to the disruption of the ordered structure of the starch molecular chains and the weakening of the interactions between the molecular chains, making the starch granules susceptible to attack by digestive enzymes [ 48 , 49 ].…”

Rheological Properties of Wheat Flour Modified by Plasma-Activated Water and Heat Moisture Treatment and in vitro Digestibility of Steamed Bread

“…The ΔH of PAW-25% sample was the lowest. It may be due to the formation of more heterogeneous crystallites which caused by the acid degradation from plasma activated water ( 16 , 17 ).…”