Summary

Flour is the milled wheat grain as edible. The wheat flour has been the most largely produced grain in the world. They are categorized as below.
-Clean (transparent)
-White (white color)
-Brown (brown)
-Hard (hard, high protein content, mainly for bread flour)
-Soft (soft, low protein content, mainly for cake flour)

Soft type is separated to cake flour, which has lower gluten or confectionery flour, which has a little more gluten. Cake flour is white flour made of fine milled soft wheat. It contains lower protein (8 to 10%) and is suitable for fine texture cake or cookies.

American cake flour is bleached. In the countries where bleaching is not allowed, heat treatment is applied instead of bleaching. Heat treated flour is produced for the purpose of filling functional property expected for the fragrant food (natural sauce, soup, or gravy.) Material is essentially required to have functional properties, such as heat-resisting, acid resist, or shearing stability for producing the heat treated food or dry mixing cooked food.

For the production of heat-treated flour, following points are important in cooking and drying process. This process consists of Vrieco Nauta mixer and Drymeister.

• Precise wetting amount
• Short residence time at drying process
• Direct and indirect heat input

For the flour of moisture contents of 4%, Vrieco Nauta mixer equipped with jacket should be applied for wetting and cooking. Blowing inside the mixer while mixing and cooking (aging) proceeds for 20 to 40 minutes. In this process, moisture of flour increases from 4% to 15%. When wetting and cooking cycle is finished, the product is discharged from mixer to hopper then, the product is immediately milled and dried by Drymeister. Moisture content of dried product becomes as the same as the feed, 4%.