ABSTRACT
The flour milling and baking industry was an early adopter of NIR technology. This was a consequence of a commercial need for the measurement of wheat protein content at the point of trade. Once NIR had been adopted for this purpose, its use could be extended to the analysis of flour for protein, moisture, granularity and starch damage at critical control points in the milling process (setting of break and reduction roll pressures and blending of flour streams), baking (dough mixing and leavening) and snack food production (degree of cook in extrusion cooking). Thus, NIR analysis is a mature technology for process control in flour milling, bread baking, cookie and cake making and extrusion cooking as well as for the compositional analysis (i.e., starch, protein, moisture, lipids, fiber) of wheat-based foods. NIR has also been used for cereal chemistry research, such as the study of the reaction kinetics of bread staling. In some cases, the NIR measurement does not require calibration against a reference method.
