Development of a standard test for dough-making properties of oat cultivars

• Reproduction of various quality profiles of wheat flour is possible using oat flour and gluten.
• Reproduction of extensibility properties of wheat flour using oat flour as a base instead of oat meal is novel.
• We produced an oat based dough system with similar extensibility characteristics to a wheat dough.
• This dough system was sensitive to detect extensibility differences among oat cultivars.
• This dough system can be used to study the role of individual oat components in relation to bread-making purposes.

Bread is consumed all over the world. However, so far, production of large volume bread is only possible with wheat. Alternatives, such as oats, are less suitable but this is partly due to the lack of knowledge about their functionality for other purposes than porridge, which is their most common use. Existing standard tests for the dough making characteristics of wheat flour are not suitable for oat flour, hampering research to optimize oats for bread-making purposes. We therefore set out to develop a test to evaluate oat in relation to mixing and dough making properties using wheat as a model. It was possible to reproduce the profile of various qualities of wheat flour using mixtures of oat flour and gluten in different proportions. Our standard test was based on a dough system composed of 87.2% oat flour and 12.8% gluten and it presented similar properties to a wheat flour with regard to resistance to extension. This dough system was sensitive and reliable (coefficient of variation lower than 10%) for detecting differences among oat cultivars, and it can be used to screen oat varieties and individual oat components in relation to relevant properties for bread-making purposes.