ABSTRACT
In the 1940s, Finney pioneered fractionation and reconstitution techniques for wheat flours (Finney 1943) and showed that gluten protein was responsible for dough strength and bread-making performance. In the 1970s, Orth and Bushuk (1972) discovered that the amount of residue protein (insoluble in lactic acid) in flour gave a measure of bread-making potential. The 1970s decade was also a time when poor-quality wheat varieties appeared on the scene in Europe. These wheats had low milling quality and the weak properties of the dough from them gave processing problems in bakeries and poor bread-making performance. The problems arose because varieties were largely developed on the basis of yield potential. Booth and Melvin (1979) used fractionation and reconstitution techniques to study one of these varieties, Maris Huntsman. They found that its residue protein was much lower in amount than that of a typical, high-quality Canadian Western Red Spring (CWRS) wheat. Furthermore, interchange of protein fractions showed a lack of quality in lactic acid soluble and insoluble fractions.
