Quality of shear fractionated wheat gluten - Comparison to commercial vital wheat gluten

The functional properties of gluten obtained with a shear-induced separation process, recently proposed by Peighambardoust et al. (2008), are compared with a commercially available vital wheat gluten. Two tests were performed. First, a relatively strong wheat flour, Soissons, was enriched with gluten protein. The resulting dough was then evaluated on its kneading performance. Second, a weak flour, Kolibri, was enriched to evaluate the baking properties. The wheat flour enriched with gluten protein obtained via the shear-induced separation process (SCG) showed comparable to improved gluten functionality relative to commercial available vital wheat gluten protein (CVWG). The differences in functionality cannot be directly related to the composition as analyzed with SE-HPLC, because the composition of the gluten materials was rather comparable. The differences in functionality may therefore be related to the different drying techniques used or to the inherent mildness of the shear-induced separation technique.