Industrial aptitude of wheat grains depends on the quantity and quality of proteins they contain. In particular, those attributes are mainly determined by a visco-elastic substance, called gluten, which is formed through the interaction between the wheat proteins glutenin and gliadin.
Millers Group Quality Department´s technicians submit wheat flours to different tests in order to evaluate their dry and wet gluten content. The first kind of analysis is performed with Perten equipments (Glutomatic) and consists on isolating gluten by washing the dough con sodium chloride and removing thereafter, by centrifugation, the residual water adhered to protein.
Then, in order to determine wet gluten content, technicians weight remaining particles of flour. They also evaluate gluten characteristics for determining, by means of the Gluten Index, if it is string or weak. The mentioned index measures the percentage of gluten that remained sticked in the sives after the centrifugation.
In those flours with low gluten content the index valu will be nule because the scarce gluten they contain will have gone through the sieve after the procedure was finished.
