Millers: Avoid Complaints, Achieve Better Ouputs with Process-Driven Flour COAs

This article originally appeared in an issue of Milling and Grain magazine (pages 50-52).

The miller-and-baker relationship, which has existed for multiple millennia, has always been delicate. Traditionally, the miller has been the gatekeeper to flour quality; the miller develops the flour specification based on their experience, and the baker typically accepts the flour with rarely any questions asked.

Millers utilize flour and dough rheology instruments as part of their protocol for developing their flour specifications. Beginning with the Alveograph – an instrument that has been in use for over 100 years – the miller’s technological arsenal has grown steadily over the last several decades to help them manage flour quality and consistency.

Skills gap on production lines

However, during this same time, the baking industry has also experienced several changes. Many operations began adapting sophisticated automated machines to mix doughs, shape products, and bake the goods with pinpoint precision. In addition to the boom in industrial production methods, many baking companies note that several master bakers have left the production lines, a trend that clearly began during the Covid-19 pandemic and still proceeds today.

With more complex production processes and less expertise on the line, many millers have noticed increased customer complaints. While a master baker may be able to make the split second process adjustment to add more water to a dough or adjust the recipe with enzymes to meet an ideal consistency, most baking operators today blame the miller’s flour first.

In fact, a recent survey revealed that 96 percent of commercial bakeries report quality problems in their processes despite using flour with the miller’s Certificate of Acceptance (COA). A quarter of those stated they experience quality issues in more than one out of ten deliveries. While the miller is undoubtedly an expert in creating flour specifications based on their training and expertise, could it be possible that a numbers-driven flour specification approach may not work as well in today’s baking industry?

Beyond just protein content

Starch significantly influences baked product quality but is rarely tested or included in most flour quality acceptance specifications (COAs). The shift towards more industrial production is a gamechanger in the baking industry. Nevertheless, the way of looking at flour quality has generally remained the same over the last century.

Bakers and millers still use the same old strategies: A hard wheat makes a strong flour good for bread, or a soft wheat makes a weaker flour good for biscuits. Of course, this works as a rough approach and was sufficient for bakers with the production process know-how to make the necessary adjustments to accommodate flour variation, but this is much more difficult today.

Most flour specifications today are weighted heavily on protein content. Protein, indeed, is an essential piece of the flour quality puzzle, and it is convenient and easy to measure precisely using near-infrared spectroscopy (NIR) and near-infrared transmission (NIT) technologies.

Firstly, protein quantity does not reflect protein quantity. Additionally, if the protein quantity of bread flour typically falls between 10-12 percent of the overall flour composition, how is the miller considering the remaining 88-90 percent in their formulations?

Often, the cause of many production issues in baking plants, despite flours meeting COA specifications for protein quantity, is starch quality. Starch is frequently overlooked in a miller’s COA, even though starch may comprise around 70 percent of the flour composition. Starch directly influences the water absorption capacity of flour, among other vital quality aspects. There are also two types of starch in flour – intact and damaged – so accounting for the unique intricacies of those is also critical for the flour quality assessment.

The good news is that many millers are moving away from a protein-centric flour specification, thanks to today’s tools to help objectively measure starch and all other characteristics of flour and dough. However, today, mostly millers use these tools, not bakers.

Bakers know their dough

Let’s go back to our 96 percent of interviewed bakers: If they still have production issues despite the COA being duly established and controlled, it does not necessarily mean that their processes are wrong; rather, do they need more information to control consistency?

The baker must take a greater role in flour specifications to adapt flour quality control in a new, more competitive industry and reduce complaints. Bakers produce goods; they know their processes and recipes better than anyone, but they also suffer directly and pay for it when production does not go as expected. While knowledgeable in their process and do their best to anticipate flour performance by conducting their own baking tests, the miller cannot recreate the same environment as their baker customers.

This disconnect presents a unique opportunity for millers to change a centuries-old paradigm, where the miller is the sole controller of the flour quality program. Instead, it includes the baker in the quality specification process. Switching from ‘expert guessing’ to data-driven measurement using objective tools, then cross-referencing the baker’s data with their own, is a first step in creating a robust flour COA that aligns with the baker’s unique process.

Working back to the flour

A process-driven flour quality approach does not replace flour formulation methods but helps translate baking expertise into measurable numbers. For bakers to define what is suitable for their process, it is essential to view the process backwards: from the finished product to the flour. The purpose of a baking plant is to create baked products that meet their customers’ expectations. The baker knows this better than the miller, so the baker should also share when they have positive results from the miller’s flour, not just the complaints.

To help with this exchange, ask baker customers to visit the mill and participate in the flour formulation process. They could keep a record of flour deliveries that consistently met ideal final product specifications, noting those that needed adjustments or were discarded. The qualification process may need adjusting if the accepted flour still results in production issues or lower-quality end products.

Certain flour and dough characterization tools now include a dough introduction kit for conducting at-line dough tests in as little as two minutes of analysis. This is a valuable application for bakers who take a more active role in the flour quality specification process while also improving process decision making.

Some flour and dough quality characterizers now include features for the baker to analyze doughs at-line. These new tools quickly and objectively measure dough functionality and gain valuable information about the proteins and starch, along with any improvers or enzymes in the baker’s recipe. Through this approach, the baker can align what they are experiencing on the processing line against the same tools and specifications their miller uses to develop their flour formulations. Not only can this simple effort go a long way in reducing customer complaints, but it also helps empower bakers to make better process decisions to close the knowledge gap left by master bakers leaving the industry.

Know your baker’s process

Millers are the flour experts. They know how to select, prepare, and blend wheat precisely to meet numbers and specifications. However, many may not target the correct parameters today. Nothing is more frustrating for a miller than sending flour that fits their COA only to receive customer complaints.

COAs focusing on protein, water absorption, dough mixing time, and stability do not account for starch or the baker’s exclusive process. By linking objective data on finished products with accurate characterizations of process-adapted flours, millers and bakers can jointly develop Certificates of Acceptance (COAs) tailored to specific baking processes and product lines.