cereal processing

Introduction

      treatment of cereals (cereal) and other plants to prepare their starch for human food, animal feed, or industrial use.

       Nutrient composition of selected raw cereal grains (per 100 grams)Cereals, or grains, are members of the grass family cultivated primarily for their starchy seeds (technically, dry fruits). Wheat, rice, corn (maize), rye, oats, barley, sorghum, and some of the millets are common cereals; their composition is shown in the Table (Nutrient composition of selected raw cereal grains (per 100 grams)).

       starch, a carbohydrate stored in most plants, is a major constituent of the average human diet, providing a low-cost energy source with good keeping qualities. Cereals are high in starch, which may be used in pure or flour form. Starches are also obtained from such root sources as potatoes and from the pith of tropical palm trees. Various starches are used commercially in food processing and in the manufacture of laundering preparations, paper, textiles, adhesives, explosives, and cosmetics.

      This article treats the processing and utilization of the major cereals—wheat, rice, barley, rye, oats, corn, sorghum, millet, and buckwheat; of important starchy foods consumed in certain countries instead of cereals, including potatoes and cassava; and of soybeans, legumes widely used in the bakery industry. Wheat species are treated in detail, other cereals in a more general way.

Cereal processing and utilization

Milling

      Cereal processing is complex. The principal procedure is milling—that is, the grinding of the grain so that it can be easily cooked and rendered into an attractive foodstuff. Cereals usually are not eaten raw, but different kinds of milling (dry and wet) are employed, depending on the cereal itself and on the eating customs of the consumer. Wheat may be crushed with grinding stones or similar devices or by modern automated systems employing steel cylinders, followed by air purification and numerous sievings to separate the endosperm from the outer coverings and the germ.

       corn is often milled by wet processes, but dry milling is also practiced, especially in the developing countries. Corn, with its high germ content, is inclined to respire more during storage and, unless precautions are taken, may increase in temperature during incorrect storage. Most other cereals are ground in the dry state. Some cereal grains are polished, removing most of the bran and germ and leaving the endosperm.

Uses

Human food

      Cereals are used for both human and animal food and as an industrial raw material. Although milled white flour is largely used for bread production, especially in industrialized countries, the grain may be converted to food in other ways. In India the major part of the grain is not ground into flour in roller mills but is roughly ground in small crushing mills into a meal called atta. This meal is cooked into flat cakes known as chapatis.

Animal food

      The principal cereals used as components of animal feeds (feed) are wheat and such wheat by-products as the outer coverings separated in the preparation of white flour (bran and the more floury middlings), corn, barley, sorghum, rye, and oats. These are supplemented by protein foods and green fodders.

      Animal foods require proper balance between the cereals (carbohydrates) and the more proteinous foods, and they must also contain suitable amounts of necessary minerals, vitamins, and other nutrients. The compounded ration for a milking cow generally contains about 50–80 percent cereals, consisting of wheat by-products, flaked or ground corn, barley, sorghum, wheat, and oats. Requirements for most balanced rations for pigs and poultry are similar. Corn is especially useful in high-energy feeds either as meal or as the flaked and partly gelatinized product; barley is desirable for fattening, and oats help provide a better balanced cereal for livestock. Without cereals for use in farm animal foods, the available supply of the animal protein required in the human diet would be greatly reduced.

Industrial uses

      The relatively minor use of cereals in nonfood products includes the cellulose in the straw of cereals by the paper industry, flour for manufacturing sticking pastes and industrial alcohol, and wheat gluten for core binders in the casting of metal. Rice chaff is often used as fuel in Asia.

Wheat: (wheat) varieties and characteristics

      The three principal types of wheat used in modern food production are Triticum vulgare (or aestivum), T. durum (durum wheat), and T. compactum. T. vulgare provides the bulk of the wheat used to produce flour for bread making and for cakes and biscuits (cookies). It can be grown under a wide range of climatic conditions and soils. Although the yield varies with climate and other factors, it is cultivated from the southernmost regions of America almost to the Arctic and at elevations from sea level to over 10,000 feet. T. durum, longer and narrower in shape than T. vulgare, is mainly ground into semolina (purified middlings) instead of flour. Durum semolina is generally the best type for the production of pasta foods. T. compactum is more suitable for confectionery and biscuits than for other purposes.

 The wheat grain, the raw material of flour production and the seed planted to produce new plants, consists of three major portions: (1) the embryo or germ (including its sheaf, the scutellum) that produces the new plant, (2) the starchy endosperm, which serves as food for the germinating seed and forms the raw material of flour manufacture, and (3) various covering layers protecting the grain. (See Figure 1—>.) Although proportions vary, other cereal grains follow the same general pattern. Average wheat grain composition is approximately 85 percent endosperm, 13 percent husk, and 2 percent embryo.

      Characteristic variations of the different types of wheat are important agricultural considerations. Hard wheats include the strong wheats of Canada (Manitoba) and the similar hard red spring (HRS) wheats of the United States. They yield excellent bread-making flour because of their high quantity of protein (approximately 12–15 percent), mainly in the form of gluten. Soft wheats, the major wheats grown in the United Kingdom, most of Europe, and Australia, result in flour producing less attractive bread than that achieved from strong wheats. The loaves are generally smaller, and the crumb has a less pleasing structure. Soft wheats, however, possess excellent characteristics for the production of flour used in cake and biscuit manufacture.

      Wheats intermediate in character include the hard red winter (HRW) wheats of the central United States and wheat from Argentina. There are important differences between spring and winter varieties. Spring wheats, planted in the early spring, grow quickly and are normally harvested in late summer or early autumn. Winter wheats are planted in the autumn and harvested in late spring or early summer. Both spring and winter wheats are grown in different regions of the United States and Russia. Winter varieties can be grown only where the winters are sufficiently mild. Where winters are severe, as in Canada, spring types are usually cultivated, and the preferred varieties mature early, allowing harvesting before frost.

 In baking and confectionery, the terms strong and weak indicate flour from hard and soft wheats, respectively. The term strength is used to describe the type of flour, strong flours being preferred for bread manufacture and weak flours for cakes and biscuits. Strong flours are high in protein content, and their gluten has a pleasing elasticity; weak flours are low in protein, and their weak, flowy gluten produces a soft, flowy dough. (See Figure 2—>.)

      Wheat breeders regularly produce new varieties, not only to combat disease but also to satisfy changing market demands. Many varieties of wheat do not retain their popularity, and often those popular in one decade are replaced in the next. New varieties of barley have also been developed, but there have been few varieties of rice.

Wheat flour

      The milling of wheat into flour for the production of bread, cakes, biscuits, and other edible products is a huge industry. Cereal grains are complex, consisting of many distinctive parts. The objective of milling is separation of the floury edible endosperm from the various branny outer coverings and elimination of the germ, or embryo. Because wheats vary in chemical composition, flour composition also varies.

 Although some important changes have occurred in flour milling, basic milling procedure during the past 100 years has employed the gradual reduction process as described below and illustrated in Figure 3—>.

Milling

      In modern milling considerable attention is given to preliminary screening and cleaning of the wheat or blend of wheats to exclude foreign seed and other impurities. The wheat is dampened and washed if it is too dry for subsequent efficient grinding, or if it is too damp it is gently dried to avoid damaging the physical state of the protein present, mainly in the form of the elastic substance gluten.

      The first step in grinding for the gradual reduction process is performed between steel cylinders, with grooved surfaces, working at differential speeds. The wheat is directed between the first “break,” or set of rolls, and is partially torn open. There is little actual grinding at this stage. The “chop,” the resulting product leaving the rolls, is sieved, and three main separations are made: some of the endosperm, reduced to flour called “first break flour”; a fair amount of the coarse nodules of floury substances from the endosperm, called semolina; (semolina) and relatively large pieces of the grain with much of the endosperm still adhering to the branny outsides. These largish portions of the wheat are fed to the second break roll. The broad objective of this gradual reduction process is the release, by means of the various sets of break rolls, of inner endosperm of the grain, in the form of semolina, in amounts sufficient that the various semolinas from four or five break rolls can be separated by suitable sieving and the branny impurities can be removed by air purifiers and other devices. The cleaned semolinas are reduced to fine flour by grinding between smooth steel rolls, called reduction rolls. The flour produced in the reduction rolls is then sieved out. There are usually four or five more reduction rolls and some “scratch” rolls to scrape the last particles of flour from branny stocks. Since the various sieving and purification processes free more and more endosperm in the form of flour, flour is obtained from a whole series of processing operations. The flour is sieved out after each reduction roll, but no attempt is made to reduce to flour all the semolina going to a particular reduction roll. Some of the endosperm remains in the form of finer semolina and is again fed to another reduction roll. Each reduction roll tends to reduce more of the semolina to flour and to flatten bran particles and thus facilitate the sieving out of the branny fractions. The sieving plant generally employs machines called plan-sifters, and the air purifiers also produce a whole series of floury stocks.

      Modern flour processing consists of a complicated series of rolls, sieves, and purifiers. Approximately 72 percent of the grain finally enters the flour sack.

      The sacked flour may consist of 20 or more streams of flour of various states of purity and freedom from branny specks. By selection of the various flour streams it is possible to make flour of various grades. Improvements in milling techniques, use of newer types of grinding machinery in the milling system, speeding up of rolls, and improved skills have all resulted in flour produced by employing the fundamentals of the gradual reduction process but with simplified and shorter milling systems. Much less roll surface is now required than was needed as recently as the 1940s.

      The purest flour, selected from the purest flour streams released in the mill, is often called patent flour. It has very low mineral (or ash) content and is remarkably free from traces of branny specks and other impurities. The bulk of the approximately 72 percent released is suited to most bread-making purposes, but special varieties are needed for some confectionery purposes. These varieties may have to be especially fine for production of specialized cakes, called high-ratio cakes, that are especially light and have good keeping qualities.

      In many countries the flour for bread production is submitted to chemical treatments to improve the baking quality.

      In modern processing, regrinding of the flour and subsequent separation into divisions by air treatment has enabled the processors to manufacture flour of varying protein content from any one wheat or grist of wheats.

Composition and grade

 Flour consists of moisture, proteins (mainly in gluten form), a small proportion of fat or lipids, carbohydrates (mainly starch, with a small amount of sugar), a trace of fibre, mineral matter (higher amounts in whole meal), and various vitamins. Composition varies among the types of flour, semolinas, middlings, and bran (see Figure 2—>).

protein content

      For bread making it is usually advantageous to have the highest protein content possible (depending on the nature of the wheat used), but for most other baked products, such as cookies (sweet biscuits) and cakes, high protein content is rarely required. gluten can easily be washed out of flour by allowing a dough made of the flour and water to stand in water a short time, followed by careful washing of the dough in a gentle stream of water, removing the starch and leaving the gluten. For good bread-making characteristics, the gluten should be semi-elastic, not too stiff and unyielding but not soft and flowy, although a flowy quality is required for biscuit manufacture.

      The gluten, always containing a small amount of adhering starch, is essentially hydrated protein. With careful drying it will retain its elasticity when again mixed with water and can be used to increase the protein content of specialized high-protein breads.

      Sometimes locally grown wheat, often low in protein, may be the only type available for flour for bread making. This situation exists in parts of France, Australia, and South Africa. The use of modern procedures and adjustment of baking techniques, however, allow production of satisfactory bread. In the United Kingdom, millers prefer a blend of wheat, much of it imported, but modern baking procedures have allowed incorporation of a larger proportion of the weak English wheat than was previously feasible.

Treatment of flour

      Use of “improvers,” or oxidizing substances, enhances the baking quality of flour, allowing production of better and larger loaves. Relatively small amounts are required, generally a few parts per million. Although such improvers and the bleaching agents used to rectify excessive yellowness in flour are permitted in most countries, the processes are not universal. Improvers include bromates, chlorine dioxide (in gaseous form), and azodicarbonamide. The most popular bleacher used is benzoyl peroxide.

Grade

      The grade of flour is based on freedom from branny particles. Chemical testing methods are employed to check general quality and particularly grade and purity. Since the ash (mineral content) of the pure branny coverings of the wheat grain is much greater than that of the pure endosperm, considerable emphasis is placed on use of the ash test to determine grade. Bakers will generally pay higher prices for pure flour of low ash content, as the flour is brighter and lighter in colour. Darker flours may have ash content of 0.7 to 0.8 percent or higher.

      A widely employed modern method for testing flour colour is based on the reflectance of light from the flour in paste form. This method requires less than a minute; the indirect ash test requires approximately one to two hours.

Nonwheat cereals

barley

      Most of the barley grown in the world is used for animal feed, but a special pure barley is the source of malt for beer production. Barley is also used in the manufacture of vinegar, malt extract, some milk-type beverages, and certain breakfast foods. In addition, in flaked form it is employed in some sections of the brewing industry, and pearl barley (skins removed by emery friction) is used in various cooked foods.

 Barley (see Figure 4—>) can be cultivated on poorer soil and at lower temperatures than wheat. An important characteristic in barley is “winterhardiness,” which involves the ability to modify or withstand many types of stresses, particularly that of frost. However, barley is subject to many of the diseases and pests that affect wheat.

      The use of barley in animal feed is increasing; it has been a basic ingredient of pig foods for years and is increasingly used for cattle feed. Its use in poultry foods has decreased because it has a lower starch equivalent when compared with wheat or corn and thus provides a lower-energy ration, unsuitable in modern poultry production. Barley vitamin content is similar to that of wheat.

corn

 Corn, or maize, a cereal cultivated in most warm areas of the world, has many varieties. The United States, the principal producer of corn, cultivates two main commercial types, Zea indurata (flint corn) and Z. indentata (dent corn). The plant grows to a height of about three metres or more. The corn kernel (shown in Figure 5—>) is large for a cereal, with a high embryo content, and corn oil extracted from the germ is commercially valuable. The microscopic appearance of the starch is distinctive, and the principal protein in ordinary corn is the prolamin zein, constituting half of the total protein. On hydrolysis zein yields only very small amounts of tryptophan or lysine, making it low in biological value. The proteins of corn, like those of most cereals other than wheat, do not provide an elastic gluten.

      Much of the corn is wet-processed to produce corn flour, widely used in cooking (see below Starch products: Cornstarch (cereal processing)). Corn, dry-milled as grits or as meal or turned into flaked corn with some of its starch partially gelatinized, is a popular component in compounded animal feedstuffs. In dry-milled form it is also the basis of human food throughout large areas of Africa and South America. Its nutritive value is limited by its low lysine content. Much recent research has involved development of a corn with higher lysine content. Mutants have been produced containing much less zein but possessing protein with higher than normal lysine and tryptophan contents, sometimes increased as high as 50 percent. These corns, called Opaque-2 and Floury-2, possess certain drawbacks. They are generally lower in yield than dent hybrids, are subject to more kernel damage when combine-harvested, and may be more difficult to process. Nevertheless, these new hybrid corns are expected to become widely cultivated, and the principles involved in their production may also be applied to sorghum, wheat, and rice. Corn is popular for use in breakfast foods.

Sorghum

      Sorghum, also called milo, is of smaller size than corn but is generally the same type of cereal, with similar appearance. Its numerous types are mainly used for animal feeding. It is grown extensively in the United States, Pakistan, central India, Africa, and China. In the sorghum endosperm, the proteins soluble in hot 60 percent alcohol, called kafirin, constitute the major portion of the protein. Milo germ oil is similar to corn germ oil; its major fatty acids are palmitic, stearic, and particularly oleic and linoleic. Milo is commercially graded in the United States. In waxy varieties the starch is principally in the form of amylopectin, with very little amylose. Such starches possess special viscosity characteristics.

oats

 Oats belong to the botanical genus Avena, which includes a large number of types, the principal being A. sativa (see photograph—>), A. sterilisand A. strigosa. Oats are widely grown in most countries but are not suitable for Mediterranean climates. Oats are frequently grown on farms as feed for the farm's livestock. They are well balanced chemically, with fairly high fat content, and are particularly suitable for feeding horses and sheep.

 Although a large portion of the world's oat production is used for animal feed, oatmeal is a popular human food in many countries. Thin-skinned grains, fairly rich in protein and not too starchy, are selected (see Figure 6—>). Preliminary cleaning is essential for human consumption. The oats are then kilned (roasted). Thin-husked oats yield 60 percent oatmeal; varieties with thick husks yield only 50 percent.

      Rapid development of rancidity is a serious problem in oats and oat products. The free fatty acid content must be controlled because formation of these acids tends to produce a soapy taste resulting from the activity of the enzyme lipase. A few minutes of steam treatment normally destroys the lipase activity in the grain.

rye

      Rye, which has been known for some 2,000 years, ranks second to wheat as a bread flour. The principal rye producers are Russia, Poland, Belarus, Germany, and Ukraine. The popularity of true rye bread is decreasing, and a similar bread, retaining some of the original characteristics, is now made from a rye and wheat blend. The protein of European rye tends to be low and does not yield gluten in the same way as does wheat. Rye bread, closer-grained and heavier than wheat bread, is aerated by the use of a leaven (sourdough) rather than yeast. The grain is susceptible to attack by the parasitic fungus ergot (Claviceps purpurea).

rice

      Cultivated rice is known botanically as Oryza sativa, only one of some 25 species comprising the genus Oryza. The importance of this cereal to certain parts of the world may be seen from the fact that in Sanskrit there exists, besides the usual word for rice, another term signifying “sustainer of the human race.” Rice is the staple food for millions in Southeast Asia, almost equal to wheat in importance among the world's cereal crops.

Cultivation

      More than 90 percent of the world's rice is grown in Asia, principally in China, India, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, with smaller amounts grown in Japan, Pakistan, and various Southeast Asian nations. Rice is also cultivated in parts of Europe, in North and South America, and in Australia. The bulk of the rice cultivated in Asia is grown under water in flooded fields. Successful production depends on adequate irrigation (irrigation and drainage), including construction of dams and waterwheels, and on the quality of the soil. Long periods of sunshine are essential. Rice yields vary considerably, ranging from 700 to 4,000 kilograms per hectare (600 to 3,500 pounds per acre). Adequate irrigation, which means inundation of the fields to a depth of several inches during the greater part of the growing season, is a basic requirement for productive land use.

      Dryland paddy production, with harvesting by modern mechanical means, is limited to a few areas, and it produces only a fraction of the total world crop.

      As with other cereals, weeds, especially wild red rice, are a constant problem. The commonest pests include plant bugs, stem borers, worms, and grasshoppers. The crop, often harvested with a sickle, is frequently dried in earth or concrete pits. Threshing is often carried out by trampling or with crude implements. Only in a few rice-growing regions are more modern procedures used in harvesting.

      Manpower requirements for crops vary enormously, but over 400 man-hours per acre are required in smallholdings in Asia, where labour is cheap.

      In Asia the paddy is cultivated in three main types of soil, including clays with a firm bottom within a few inches of the surface; silts and soft clays with soft bottoms becoming hard on drying; and peats and “mucks” containing peat, provided the depth of the peat is not excessive. Fields must be drained and dried before harvesting. When combine harvesters or binder threshers are employed, the grain must be dried to about 14 percent moisture so that no deterioration takes place in storage. When reaper binders are used, the crop is “shocked” in certain ways so that the grain is protected from rain.

Milling

      Milling methods used in most of Asia are primitive, but large mills operate in Japan and some other areas. Hulling of the paddy is usually accomplished by pestle and mortar worked by hand, foot, or water power. Improvements are slowly taking place. The yield of milled rice is dependent on the size and shape of the grain, the degree of ripeness, and the extent of exposure to the sun. Some large mills, handling 500 to 1,000 tons of paddy daily, have specialized hulling plants with consequent smaller losses from broken grain. They generally employ modern milling techniques and rely on controlled drying plants instead of on sun drying.

 The weight of the husk is about 20 percent of the weight of the paddy, and there are losses of about 5 percent from dirt, dead grains, and other impurities. Approximately 74 percent of the paddy is available as rice and rice by-products. The yield from milling and subsequent emery polishings includes about 50 percent whole rice, 17 percent broken rice, 10 percent bran, and 3 percent meal. Rice grains have a series of thin coats that can be removed or partially removed in the process of pearling and whitening (see Figure 7—>).

      About 60 percent of the Indian rice is parboiled. In the parboiling process the paddy is steeped in hot water, subjected to low-pressure steam heating, then dried and milled as usual. Parboiling makes more rice available from the paddy, and more nutrients (largely vitamin B₁) are transferred from the outer coverings to the endosperm, improving the nutritive value of the finished product. Parboiled rice may contain two to four times as much thiamine (vitamin B₁) and niacin as milled raw rice, and losses in cooking may also be reduced.

      Alcoholic (alcoholic beverage) drinks, such as sake in Japan and wang-tsin in China, are made from rice with the aid of fungi. The hull or husk of paddy, of little value as animal feed because of a high silicon content that is harmful to digestive and respiratory organs, is used mainly as fuel.

Nutritive value

      The lysine content of rice is low. As rice is not a complete food, and the majority of Asians live largely on rice, it is important that loss of nutrients in processing and cooking should be minimal. Lightly milled rice has about 0.7 milligram of 1 (thiamin) per 1,000 nonfatty calories, and the more costly highly milled product has only 0.18 milligram of B₁ on the same basis. For adequate nutrition, vitamin B₁ in the daily diet on this basis should be 0.5–0.6 milligram. The amount of fat-soluble vitamins (vitamin) in rice is negligible.

      In some countries rice is enriched by addition of synthetic vitamins. According to U.S. standards for enriched rice, each pound must contain 2–4 milligrams of thiamine, 1.2–2.4 milligrams of riboflavin, 16–32 milligrams of niacin, and 13–26 milligrams of iron. In enriched rice the loss of water-soluble vitamins in cooking is much reduced because enrichment is applied to about 1 grain in 200, and these enriched grains are protected by a collodion covering. In ordinary rice, especially when open cookers are employed or excessive water is used, nutrient losses can be high.

millet

      This term is applied to a variety of small seeds originally cultivated by the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans and still part of the human diet in China, Japan, and India, though in Western countries it is used mainly for birdseed. The genus is termed Panicum. The small seed is normally about two millimetres long and nearly two millimetres broad. The term proso is one of several alternative names. Japanese barnyard millet is a well-known variety.

Other starch-yielding plants

cassava

      Cassava, often called manioc, is not a cereal but a tuber; however, it replaces cereals in certain countries, supplying the carbohydrate content of the diet. The botanical name is Manihot esculenta, and the plant is native to South America, especially Brazil. It is now grown in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and parts of Africa. A valuable source of starch, cassava is familiar in many developed countries in a granular form known as tapioca.

      Easily cultivated and curiously immune to most food-crop pests, cassava is a staple crop in several areas of Latin America. The actual tubers may weigh up to 14 kilograms (30 pounds). Some tubers may be bitter and contain dangerously large amounts of prussic acid.

      Dry milling of cassava is rarely practiced because it yields a product inferior to wet-processed starch in which the tubers are crushed or rasped with water and the starch is permitted to settle. Wet starch is dried to a point where it can be crumbled by pressing it through metal plates (or sieves). This crumbled material is subjected to a rotary motion, sometimes carried out on canvas cloth fastened to cradle-shaped frames. Another method is to tumble the material in revolving steam-jacketed cylinders so that the particles assume a round pellet form and are partially gelatinized as they dry. Sun drying is employed in both homes and small mills.

      Many tapioca factories and mills are equipped with modern raspers, special shaking or rotating sieves, and settling tanks of various types; but some fermentation takes place, and small rural mills can often be identified by the smell of butyric acid. In larger mills, centrifuges are replacing the settling tanks.

      For its various industrial uses, the tuber usually goes under its alternative name, manioc. It is used in the textile industries, explosives manufacture, leather tanning, and production of glues and dextrins and alcohol.

      Fresh cassava leaves are rich in protein, calcium, and vitamins A and C. Their prussic acid level must be reduced to safe limits by boiling; the duration of boiling depends on the variety of the leaves. Cassava leaves are a popular vegetable in Africa, and the tuber also is used in meal for animal feed.

soybean

      Soybean (Glycine max) is not a cereal but a legume; because of its widespread use in the baking industry, it may appropriately be dealt with here. Soybean provides protein of high biological value. Although Asia is its original source, the United States became the major world producer in the late 20th century.

       Amino acid composition of soy proteinThe valuable oil of the soybean, widely used in industry, is extracted either by solvents or by expellers. The amino acid distribution of soy protein is more like that found in animal protein than the protein from most vegetable sources; for example, lysine comprises about 5.4 percent. The oil content includes useful amounts of phosphorus; the phosphatide content of soy flour is about 2 percent and is a mixture of lecithin and cephalin. The low carbohydrate content exists mainly as sugars. The Table (Amino acid composition of soy protein) shows the amino acid composition of soy protein.

      Although soybeans are a good source of thiamine, much of this may be lost in processing. Average vitamin contents of soybean (as micrograms per gram) are as follows: thiamine 12, riboflavin 3.5, nicotinic acid 23, pyridoxine 8, pantothenic acid 15, and biotin 0.7.

      The bulk of the soybean produced in the United States is used for animal feed; the Asian crop goes principally for human diet.

      Soybean milk is produced and used in the fresh state in China and as a condensed milk in Japan. In both of these preparations, certain antinutritive factors (antitrypsin and soyin) are largely removed. In the Western world most soy products are treated chemically or by heat to remove these antinutritive factors along with the unpopular beany taste. Such processing affects the enzymatic activity in the milk.

      Soybean is milled to produce soy flour. The flour is often used in a proportion of less than 1 percent in bakery operations. It stiffens doughs and helps to maintain crumb softness. Unprocessed soy flour, because of its lipoxidase enzyme system, is employed with high-speed mixing to bleach the flour in a dough.

      In addition to their use in bread, soy products are used in confectionery, biscuits, macaroni, infant and invalid foods, ice cream, chocolate, sausages, sauces, lemon curd, mayonnaise, meat and fish pastes, certain diabetic foods, and in such nonfood products as paint, paper, textiles, and plastics.

      A recent development is the isolation of the soybean proteins (protein) for use as emulsifiers and binders in meat products and substitutes. Enzyme-modified proteins provide useful egg-albumen supplement for whipped products.

buckwheat

      Botanically, buckwheat is not a cereal but the fruit of Fagopyrum esculentum. Its name is probably derived from its resemblance to beechnut. Believed to have originated in China, the plant grows to a height of about one metre and thrives best in cool, moist climates, although it does not easily tolerate frost. It can be grown on a wide range of soils, and a crop can be obtained within 10–12 weeks of sowing. The seed is dark brown in colour and often triangular in shape. It contains about 60 percent carbohydrate, 10 percent protein, and 15 percent fibre. A white flour can be obtained from the seeds (buckwheat cakes and pancakes are popular in certain areas), and buckwheat meal is also used in animal feed. The whole seed may be fed to poultry and game birds. There is some medical interest in buckwheat as a source of rutin, possibly effective in treatment of increased capillary fragility associated with hypertension in humans.

starch products

Commercial starches

      Starch has been used for many centuries. An Egyptian papyrus paper dating from 3500 BC was apparently treated with a starch adhesive. The major starch sources are tubers, such as potatoes and cassava, and cereals. Current starch production is considerable. Among the major producing areas, the European countries use both domestic wheat and potatoes and imported corn as the raw material; the United States uses corn and such similar cereals as sorghum; and in South America the cassava plant is the major raw material.

      Separated from tubers and cereals, starch is used for conversion into various sugars, and half of the world's separated starch is processed into glucose. Starch is also processed for use in adhesives manufacture. In the food industry starch is used as a thickener in the preparation of cornstarch puddings, custards, sauces, cream soups, and gravies. Starch from tubers and cereals provides the carbohydrate of the human diet.

      Large quantities of starch and its derivatives are used in the paper and textile industries.

Starch from tubers (tuber)

      In Germany, The Netherlands, Poland, and a number of other countries, the extraction of the starch from potatoes (potato) (sometimes called farina) is a major industry. Some factories produce over 300 tons daily. Processing involves continuous and automatic cleaning of the potatoes, thorough disintegration in raspers or hammer mills, and separation of the fibres from the pulp by centrifugal (rotary) sieves. The resulting starch “milk” contains starch in suspension and soluble potato solids in solution. The starch is separated and washed free from the solubles, the water is removed by centrifugal action, and the damp starch is dried. The flash type of dryer, using hot air, is widely employed for starches derived from both tubers and cereals. Sulfurous acid is generally introduced into the process to prevent the development of various microorganisms.

      Potato flour is also produced in Germany and other countries, slices of cleaned potatoes being dried, ground, and sieved. In Germany a “potato sago” is produced. The starch cake obtained from the potatoes is crumbled to produce reasonably uniform-size particles that are rounded by tumbling or similar operations, heated to gelatinize the outside layers of the starch, and then dried.

      Potatoes were employed in baking to make the barm, or leaven, before compressed distiller's yeast was available, and they have also been used to supplement limited supplies of wheat flour. The potatoes are cleaned, boiled until soft but not mushy, and mixed, in a proportion of 2 to 3 percent, in the dough.

      Modern, ready-to-use, dried and powdered mashed potatoes are popular consumer products.

      Cassava and tapioca starches are sometimes partially gelatinized by vacuum drying. Protein impurities are low in commercial starches of potato, sago, and tapioca but as high as 0.2 percent in wheat starch and higher in corn flour.

Cornstarch

      Corn is wet-milled to produce corn flour, or cornstarch, desirable for cooking because it forms a paste that sets with a “short” texture and separates from molds more cleanly than do the gels produced by such starches as potato, tapioca, and arrowroot, which are “long,” or elastic. In wet milling, the grains are first dry-cleaned so that other cereals and some of the impurities are removed, then steeped in warm water containing sulfur dioxide. This process softens the grains, and the outer skin and the germ are rendered removable. The corn is coarsely ground in “degerminating mills,” and the slurry is further wet-ground and sieved to remove all the germ and complete the separation of the starch.

      The germ, rich in oil, is eventually dried, and the oil is expelled by pressure, providing an excellent edible oil for culinary use, often replacing olive oil. corn oil is used for salad oil, margarine, and shortening and for such nonfood items as soap.

      The pure starch, held in suspension, was formerly collected by gravity as it flowed down tables, but in modern practice the starch suspension is thickened by the elimination of water by means of machines, and the starch is finally separated by the use of centrifuges. The starch is readily dried without gelatinization taking place.

      There is a regular demand for a good grade of corn flour, or cornstarch. Roller-milled corn is still produced for human consumption in Africa and elsewhere. In the United States some corn grits are used by brewers, but the bulk of the corn grown is used for animal feed as meal, grits, or in partially gelatinized flake form.

Rice starch

      Rice starch, largely used in laundry work, is normally prepared from broken white rice. The broken grains are steeped for several hours in a caustic soda solution, and the alkali is finally washed away with water. The softened grains are ground with more caustic soda solution, and the resulting mass is settled or submitted to centrifugation in a drum. The starch layer is agitated with water (often with 0.25 percent formaldehyde solution added), and the resulting starch liquor is dewatered, washed on a continuous rotary vacuum filter, resuspended in water, and finally dewatered in a perforated basket centrifuge to about 35 percent moisture. In modern processing it is usual to roll out a thick layer of moist starch, which is then slowly dried and falls to pieces as crystals.

Starch composition

      Starch consists of two components: amylose and amylopectin. The relative proportion of these two components varies, and they react differently to enzymatic attack. The enzyme β-amylase (maltogenic) attacks the straight chain amylose but is unable to attack most of the branch chain amylopectin. If only β-amylase is present, maltose is produced, together with a residue of the amylopectin portion, or dextrin of high molecular weight. When -amylase (dextrinogenic) attacks starch, gummy dextrins of low molecular weight are formed and can produce a sticky crumb in bread.

      In bread making there is only limited time for such enzymatic attacks on the starch, and only the “attackable” or “damaged” granules can produce the fermentable sugar for the dough. The β-amylase has little effect on viscosity. The viscosity of gelatinized starch is markedly reduced by α-amylase, however, and is therefore valuable in syrup and dextrose manufacture.

      The gelatinization of starch that occurs in hot water is an important characteristic, and the viscous pastes formed are influenced by the treatment the starch has received in its preliminary separation from the cereal or tuber. Chemicals affect degree and speed of gelatinization and the nature and viscosity of the pastes formed.

      In certain cereals, particularly in special corns, the starch consists almost entirely of amylopectin, and the term “waxy” is applied to such cereals. They are useful for their unusual physical properties and viscosities. They possess outstanding paste clarity, high water-binding capacity, and resistance to gel formation and retrogradation; they are helpful in production of salad dressings, sauces, and pie fillings and in some canned goods; they are useful because of resistance to irreversible gel formation and syneresis on freezing and especially for many products stored in the frozen state.

Processing

      The carbohydrate starch is rarely consumed in the raw state and in cooking is always gelatinized to some degree. For industrial purposes starches are submitted to many processes. Starch is often partially or almost wholly gelatinized or may be converted by heat or chemical treatment into dextrins for use in adhesive pastes, with the starch assuming a completely new form. Other treatments increase solubility, and hydrolysis with acids produces completely new products, including a variety of sugars (sugar).

      Starch may be converted into sugars by the use of acids, and the sugars may be marketed as starch syrup, glucose syrup, or corn syrup; as glucose; and as commercial dextrose. Such sugars are useful in confectionery production.

      Other uses of starch include production of ethyl alcohol by fermentation procedures and production of acetone and other products. Indeed, it is impossible to record all the hundreds of uses of starch in the science-based industries.

Alimentary pastes

pasta products

 Alimentary pastes include such products as macaroni, spaghetti, vermicelli, and noodles. Such products are often called pastas. Italy is regarded as the place of origin of macaroni products, and annual consumption in that country is as high as 30–35 kilograms (65–75 pounds) per person. Annual consumption is about 6.3 kilograms in France, 3.7 in the United States, and only 0.4 kilogram in the United Kingdom. Pasta is manufactured in a wide variety of sizes and shapes (see Figure 8—>), the commonest being long, narrow strands. The most slender type of strand, vermicelli, sometimes called capelli d'angeli (“angel's hair”) in Italy, has a diameter ranging from 0.5 to 0.8 millimetre and is normally cut into lengths of about 250 millimetres and twisted into curls. Short-cut vermicelli (15–40 millimetres) is easy to manufacture and to dry. spaghetti has a diameter of about 1.5–2.5 millimetres and is usually straight. Noodles (noodle) are solid ribbons, about 0.8 millimetre thick, and in a variety of widths. macaroni is the commonest type of alimentary paste; it is hollow and has a greater thickness than the others. It can be shaped in a variety of forms, such as long, short, large, small tubes, etc.

      Macaroni is now commercially produced in large factories in Italy, North and South America, and other regions. Drying of the extruded paste is an important process, previously accomplished in Italy by sun drying.

semolina

      Semolina, not flour, is the form of cereal used, and various plain macaroni products are made by combining the correct form of semolina, from durum wheat, with water. Richer alimentary pastes are made with the addition of eggs in fresh, dried, or frozen form, and egg noodles are popular. In low-income families, alimentary pastes often provide the bulk of the calories in the diet. Macaroni products supply about 3,500 calories per kilogram and, although not themselves good sources of vitamins, are commonly cooked and consumed with butter, oil, cheese, and other items containing the needed vitamins.

      The use of hard durum semolina contributes to good quality in macaroni and other alimentary paste products. The special mills involved use many breaks, and only a few reduction rolls, to produce as much clean semolina as possible. An efficient mill employing appropriate purifiers can produce as much as 65 percent semolina (together with a little flour). Before continuous processes for pasta production were introduced, a coarse semolina was valued. In modern production, semolina is dusted and freed from flour, and regularity in size is considered important for water absorption. Very fine semolina is not popular, and the preferred semolina usually has a moisture content of about 13 percent with less than 0.8 percent ash. Freedom from bran is desired to avoid the appearance of specks. The gluten in the semolina should be reasonably strong but not as elastic as that required for bread making.

Pasta processing

      In the early factories, batch mixing of semolina and water was followed by extrusion of the resulting paste through presses containing dies. In modern practice, the bulk of alimentary pastes is made by continuous processes.

 The basic procedure for most macaroni products consists of adding water to a semolina made from suitable wheat to produce, in a short time, a plastic homogeneous mass of about 30 percent moisture. This mixture is extruded through special dies, under pressure, producing the desired size and shape, and is then dried (see Figure 9—>). There are many types of continuous paste processes adapted to the specific types of paste wanted and to the manufacturer's requirements. In the earlier days of the cottage industry, long-cut products such as spaghetti were spread evenly by hand on wooden dowels about an inch thick and over 50 inches long, and the filled sticks were then placed on racks for sun drying. Short-cut products were often scattered on wire mesh trays.

      In modern automatic (automation) processing the objective is to dry the extruded product, containing 31 percent moisture, to a hard product of about 12 percent moisture, decreasing the possibility of the goods being affected by the growth of molds and yeast. If moisture is removed too rapidly, the dried product may tend to “check” or split. If moisture is removed too slowly, souring or mold growth may occur. Proper drying is therefore ensured by adjusting air circulation, temperature, and humidity. Drying procedures differ for long and short macaroni. In the continuous process, after a first hour in which a crust is formed to protect against mold infection, slow drying is practiced.

Testing

      Cooking tests are used to ensure that the final product is satisfactory. Considerable research has been carried out to control factors tending to destroy the desirable yellow colour. Destruction of the colouring matter, a xanthophyll, can occur in mixing owing to excessive lipoxidase. Certain types of durum wheat may possess a high degree of lipoxidase activity, and it is difficult to control or check this action. The addition of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) has been suggested as a means to decrease the destruction of the semolina pigments in processing.

      In the United States, alimentary paste goods, described as noodles, egg spaghetti, or egg macaroni, must contain 5.5 percent of the solids of egg in the final product. The eggs can be used in the form of frozen yolks, dried yolks, frozen whole eggs, dried whole eggs, or fresh whole eggs or yolks. Spray-dried egg yolks of good quality are now available.

Breakfast cereals (breakfast cereal)

Origins

      The modern packaged breakfast-food industry owes its beginnings to an American religious sect, the Seventh-day Adventists (Seventh-day Adventist), who wished to avoid consumption of animal foods. In the 1860s they organized the Western Health Reform Institute in Battle Creek, Mich., later renamed the Battle Creek Sanitarium. James Jackson of Dansville, N.Y., produced a cereal food by baking whole-meal dough in thin sheets, breaking and regrinding into small chunks, rebaking and regrinding. J.H. Kellogg (Kellogg, John Harvey) of Battle Creek made biscuits about one-half inch thick from a dough mixture of wheatmeal, oatmeal, and cornmeal. The dough was baked until it was fairly dry and turning brown, and the product was ground and packed. A patient at the sanitarium, C.W. Post (Post, C W), saw the possibilities in such a product entirely apart from the original conception of healthfulness and started a business. Kellogg's (Kellogg, W K) brother, W.K. Kellogg, did likewise, and the breakfast-food industry was launched, soon achieving mass sales of cereal products in flaked, granular, shredded, and puffed forms, with flavour obtained by roasting and the addition of sugar.

Types of breakfast cereal

      Some breakfast cereals require cooking; others are packaged ready-to-eat. Roasted and rolled oatmeal, eaten as porridge, requires brief boiling. Cooking time of these processed cereals has been greatly reduced, and various “instant” forms are available.

      Although cooked oatmeal porridge was formerly a standard breakfast food, the ready-to-eat cereals of various types are now the favourite breakfast-cereal foods.

      The middlings produced in flour milling, essentially small pieces of endosperm free from bran and germ, are sold as farina and often consumed as a breakfast food in the United States. Farina is usually enriched with vitamins and minerals and may be flavoured. To reduce cooking time, 0.25 percent disodium phosphate may be added; some products require only one minute of boiling before serving.

      Ready-to-eat cereals are available in a variety of forms and are normally consumed with milk and sometimes sugar. Flaked and toasted varieties are the most popular. During processing the starch is gelatinized, halting enzymatic reactions and thus ensuring product stability and good shelf life. The sugar content is dextrinized and caramelized by a roasting process. Roasting also ensures attractive crispness resulting from moisture reduction.

Flaked cereals

      Wheat and rice flakes are manufactured, but most flaked breakfast foods are made from corn (maize), usually of the yellow type, broken down into grits and cooked under pressure with flavouring syrup consisting of sugar, nondiastatic malt, and other ingredients. Cooking is often accomplished in slowly rotating retorts under steam pressure.

      After leaving the cooker, the lumps (containing about 33 percent water) are broken down by revolving reels and sent to driers. These are usually large tubes extending vertically, through several stories, with the wet product entering the top and encountering a current of hot air (65° C, or 150° F). Other types of driers consist of horizontal rotating cylinders with steam-heated pipes running horizontally. The drying process reduces moisture to about 20 percent, and the product is transferred to tempering bins for up to 24 hours, to even moisture distribution.

      The product is next flaked by passing it between large steel cylinders (180–200 revolutions per minute), with the rolls cooled by internal water circulation. The cooked and rather soft flakes then proceed to rotating toasting ovens (normally gas-fired), where the flakes tumble through perforated drums. This treatment requires two to three minutes at 225° C (550° F). The product is dehydrated, toasted, and slightly blistered. After toasting it is cooled by circulating air, and at this stage enrichment by sprays may be carried out.

      The manufacture of wheat flakes is similar to that of corn flakes. Special machinery separates the individual grains so that they can be flaked and finally toasted.

Shredded cereals

      Shredded wheat, differing from other breakfast foods, is made from whole grains with the germ and bran retained and no flavour added. In its final form it is in tablets composed of shreds of cooked and toasted wheat. The wheat is cleaned and then boiled in water, often at atmospheric pressure. The grains reach a moisture content of 55 to 60 percent and require preliminary drying to about 50 percent. They are then placed in bins to condition them. The shredding process consists of passing the cooked and partially dried wheat to the shredding rolls, which are 150 to 200 millimetres (6 to 8 inches) in diameter and as wide as the finished tablet. On one pair of the rolls is a series of about 20 shallow corrugations running around the periphery; the surface of the other roll is smooth. The soft wheat is forced into the rolls under pressure and is cut into long shreds falling to a conveyor in such a way as to obtain superimposed shreds. These layers are cut into tablets by knives, and the tablets are transferred to baking pans. The pans pass to a revolving oven, with a baking temperature of approximately 260° C (500° F). After 10–15 minutes the outside of the product is dry and toasted, while the interior is still damp. The tablet is transferred either to another hot air oven or to a different section of the same oven, where it is dried at 120° C (250° F) for an additional 30 minutes and then cooled and packed.

Granular cereals

      Granular types are made by very different processes from the others. The first step is production of a stiff dough from wheat, malted barley flour, salt, dry yeast, and water. After mixing, fermentation proceeds for about five hours. The dough is then formed into large loaves and transferred directly to the oven. Baking requires about two hours at 205° C (400° F). The baked loaves are fragmented and the product is then thoroughly dried. Grinding by corrugated rolls follows, and the product is sieved to standard size. Very finely ground pieces are added to subsequent dough batches.

Puffed cereals

      Early in the 20th century an American patent was taken out for the preparation of puffed wheat and rice. Puffed oats and corn are now also produced. The principle of the puffing process is heating the cereal, and sometimes other vegetable products, in a pressure chamber to a pressure of 7 to 14 kilograms per square centimetre (100 to 200 pounds per square inch), then instantaneously releasing this pressure by suddenly opening the chamber, or puffing gun. Expansion of the water vapour occurs when the pressure is suddenly released, blowing up the grains or cereal pellets to several times their original size (8-fold to 16-fold for wheat, 6-fold to 8-fold for rice). The final product is toasted to a moisture content of about 3 percent to achieve desired crispness. In processing wheat, a preliminary step may be applied to free the grain from much of its bran coatings.

      Rice is usually parboiled, pearled, and cooked with sugar syrup, dried to about 25 to 30 percent moisture in rotating louvre dryers, binned, and toasted and puffed. In puffing of mixed cereal products it is necessary to start with a stiff dough containing sugar, salt, and sometimes oil, and this mixture is then cooked. The dough is pelleted by extrusion through dies and dried to attain a suitable condition for the final puffing process.

Enrichment

      Enrichment of breakfast cereals with minerals (mineral), and especially with vitamins (vitamin), is now common practice. In many of the manufacturing processes employed in breakfast-food production, considerable vitamin destruction occurs. The various heat treatments involved may destroy 90 percent of the original B₁ content of the cereal, especially in flaked and puffed products. On the other hand, a proportion of the somewhat harmful phytic acid in cereals, interfering with absorption by the body of calcium, is also destroyed; and enrichment of the products with vitamin B₁, and sometimes other components of the vitamin B complex, is not difficult to perform after the various cooking operations have been completed.

Sweeteners (sweetener)

      Various types of sweeteners are made directly from starch. glucose products made by starch conversion differ in composition and in sweetness according to whether conversion is effected by acid or by enzymes. Enzyme-produced glucose is higher in dextrose and maltose content than acid-produced glucose, which normally is higher in dextrin. Sucrose is a more powerful sweetening agent than dextrose, but glucose syrup made by enzymatic treatment usually has twice the sweetening power of that produced by acid action.

      In the production of starch separated by the wet milling of corn, one stream is normally used to produce starch, and the other stream is converted into corn syrup by heating the starch slurry in pressure tanks with acid or enzymes and following with refining processes. If the process of hydrolyzing starch is completed, the resulting product is glucose. Often the treatment is not carried to completion, and a series of dextrins and reversion products is produced. If full conversion is required, the treatment usually employs acids to liquefy, followed by saccharifying enzymes to complete the change to dextrose. Modern syrups and crystalline dextrose are made by continuous processes. The degree of conversion of the starch into the sugar dextrose is expressed as D.E. (dextrose equivalents), and confectionery syrups have a D.E. of about 36 to 55, while the fuller conversion of products with D.E. of 96 to 99 can be made for the production of almost pure glucose or dextrose, used in many food products.

      Sweeteners in the form of syrups are largely used in cake and confectionery products and also, especially in the United States, in bread manufacture. American bread is distinctly sweeter than normal European bread because of the fats and sweeteners used, and the loaves are larger per unit of weight than in the United Kingdom and most European countries.

      In the United States the baking industry uses more than one-half of the dextrose and 10 percent of the corn syrup produced. Makers of cookies (biscuits) and breakfast foods also use large amounts of sweeteners. Confectioners in Europe use syrups of many types but not as widely as in the United States.

Douglas W. Kent-Jones Ed.

Additional Reading

R. MacRae, R.K. Robinson, and M.J. Sadler (eds.), Encyclopaedia of Food Science, Food Technology, and Nutrition, 8 vol. (1993); and Y.H. Hui (ed.), Encyclopedia of Food Science and Technology, 4 vol. (1992), are general works that cover all aspects of the science of food. P. Fellows, Food Processing Technology: Principles and Practices (1988), is an introductory text.R. Paul Singh The composition, processing, and uses of cereals and other starch products are discussed in Giuseppe Fabriani and Claudia Lintas (eds.), Durum Wheat: Chemistry and Technology (1988); Y. Pomeranz (ed.), Wheat: Chemistry and Technology, 3rd ed., 2 vol. (1988), and Wheat Is Unique: Structure, Composition, Processing, End-Use Properties, and Products (1989); Y. Pomeranz, Industrial Uses of Cereals (1973), and Modern Cereal Science and Technology (1987); Advances in Cereal Science and Technology (biennial); Stanley A. Watson and Paul E. Ramstad (eds.), Corn: Chemistry and Technology (1987); Bienvenido O. Juliano (ed.), Rice: Chemistry and Technology, 2nd ed. (1985); Ruth H. Matthews (ed.), Legumes: Chemistry, Technology, and Human Nutrition (1989); Allan K. Smith and Sidney J. Circle (eds.), Soybeans: Chemistry and Technology, vol. 1, Proteins, rev. ed. (1978); Harry E. Snyder and T.W. Kwon, Soybean Utilization (1987); and Soy Protein Council, Soy Protein Products: Characteristics, Nutritional Aspects, and Utilization (1987).Some starch products are treated in R. Gordon Booth (ed.), Snack Food (1990), discussing the snack food industry in the United States and Great Britain; and Robert B. Fast and Elwood F. Caldwell (eds.), Breakfast Cereals, and How They Are Made (1990). Ed.

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