January 29/Food & Farm Week -- According to a study from Louvain, Belgium, "Flour characteristics of laboratory-milled flour fractions of two wheat cultivars were related to their cookie-baking performance. Cultivar (cv.) Albatros wheat milling yielded fractions with lower damaged starch (DS) and arabinoxylan levels and higher sodium dodecyl sulfate-extractable protein (SDSEP) levels than did cv. Meunier wheat milling. During baking, cv."
"Albatros flour doughs spread faster and set later than their cv. Meunier counterparts and, hence, resulted in larger cookie diameters. DS levels negatively affected spread rate during both cv. Albatros (R-2 = 0.68) and cv. Meunier (R-2 = 0.51) cookie baking. SDSEP levels also influenced cookie quality. The use of flour heat-treated to reduce its SDSEP levels to different degrees led to reduction of the set time (R-2 = 0.90)," wrote B. Pareyt and colleagues, University of Leuven.