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

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.

Automated summary

Plasma-activated water (PAW) and heat-moisture treatment (HMT) can be used for modifying flour, promoting granule clustering and increasing particle size, accelerating molecular interactions between wheat starch and non-starch components leading to increased resistant starch (RS) content. Addition of modified flour improves dough rheological properties while causing varying degrees of damage to the gluten protein network structure.