AlveoConsistograph Handbook

alveograph.

Preface to the Second Edition

This document is the second edition of The Alveograph Handbook, first published in 1987. That handbook corresponded to the Chopin Alveograph 1982 and previous models (notably the hydraulic devices commercialized after World War II).

Since 1987, manufacturing techniques and methods for calculation of results and for measurement have improved considerably, thanks to the use of electronics and informatics. The 1987 handbook no longer corresponds to the needs of current users. We hope that the 2008 handbook will perfectly fulfill its goal of informing readers about the alveographic technique and guiding them in using and maintaining the device.

Drs. Hamed Faridi and Vladimir Rasper from Nabisco (United States) and Guelf University (Canada), respectively, both perfect connoisseurs of alveographic measurement, coordinated the publication of The Alveograph Handbook of 1987. We owe a lot to their commitment to the initial publication, which forms the basis for this book.

We have kept the original organization in the first seven chapters, which show different aspects of alveographic measurement and of the device itself. The information has been updated to reflect new models of the alveograph. In addition, new chapters have been added to reflect major modifications and improvements.

• Chapter 8 concerns the measurement of dough consistency during kneading, using the adapted method. The device used for this determination, the consistograph, is one of the components of the new alveograph.

• Chapter 9 concerns the so-called adapted method, using dough at constant consistency (compared with the constant hydration method) for measuring rheological properties of dough obtained from strong wheat with high protein content.

• A list of alveograph parts is in Appendix 1.

The entire Chopin team, in addition to Prof. Bernard Launay (ENSIAA), was involved in the updating of The Alveograph Handbook and remains at the disposal of the readers for any complementary information.

We would like to acknowledge some people who helped us a lot in preparing this new edition: Olivier le Brun, Sonia Geoffroy, Nelly Duprat, and the staff of AACC International.

Michel Dubois, Arnaud Dubat and Bernard Launay

Preface to the First Edition

The decision of the Physical Testing Methods Committee of the American Association of Cereal Chemists (AACC) to add an alveograph handbook to the existing set of AACC handbooks on farinography and amylography was prompted by the growing interest among North American cereal laboratories in the alveograph technique as a rheological tool for assessing the processing quality of wheat flours. The alveograph has proved to be a useful tool that can give the cereal chemist a permanent record of how the characteristics of a dough change as it is expanded in a mode similar to the expansion that takes place in a rising dough.

A sound knowledge of the alveograph and its limitations is necessary for successful operation of the instrument and judicial interpretation of the test results. We hope that this handbook will fill any gaps in the readers’ technical knowledge of the function of the various parts of the instrument and thus help to improve the efficiency and proficiency of the users of the instrument. A better understanding of the basic principles involved in the rheological testing of flour doughs by alveography, together with the ability to control factors that may affect the outcome of such testing, will allow the operator to use the alveogram data more confidently and to have a better grasp of their meaning.

Chapter I charts the development of the alveograph and describes the technical specifications that are essential to proper functioning of the instrument. Chapter II discusses the theoretical basis of the alveograph principle. Chapter III explains the standard alveograph procedure, and Chapter IV discusses some modifications of the basic procedure for specific uses. Chapter V describes the interpretation of alveograms, and Chapter VI covers the factors that influence alveograms. Chapter VII is a step-by-step description of calibration and maintenance procedures. The final chapter analyzes problems that can arise with alveograms and gives possible causes for a variety of cases. An extensive list of selected references concerning the alveograph and an index follow the text.

As mentioned several times in the handbook, more work is still needed to clarify the relationships between alveogram characteristics and the performance of the tested dough under actual baking conditions. The elucidation of such relationships and the establishment of the optimum ranges for the individual quality predictors derived from alveograms will eliminate discrepancies in the interpretation of alveogram data that may still exist among different operators. In this respect, this handbook may give cereal scientists the impetus to focus more closely on this particular field of dough rheology.

Those who deserve special acknowledgment for their assistance, advice, and suggestions are: Mr. Michel Dubois, Mr. Philippe Leroux, Mr. Gerard Dehove, and Ms. Dinah Schley, all from Chopin, S.A., France; Dr. Bernard Launay, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Industries Agricoles et Alimentaires, Massy, France, who wrote Chapter II; Dr. John Faubion, Kansas State University, Manhattan; Dr. Michael Tarranto, Frito-Lay Inc., Irving, TX; Dr. Ronald Spies, Ralston Purina, St. Louis, MO; and the staff at AACC, St. Paul, MN. We are also grateful to Dr. John Finley and Dr. Gilbert Leveille at Nabisco Brands, Inc., for encouragement and support during the preparation of this handbook. In addition, technical editing by Mr. Edward Wheeler and Dr. Mourad Megally of Nabisco Brands and secretarial assistance provided by Nabisco Brands Technology Center, East Hanover, NJ, and by the Department of Food Science, University of Guelph, Canada, are appreciated.

Hamed Faridi and Vladimir Rasper

Part I

The Chopin Alveograph—Constant-Hydration Method

Outline

Chapter 1: The Chopin Alveograph

Chapter 2: Theoretical Aspects of Bubble Inflation and New Applications to Dough Rheology

Chapter 3: The Alveograph Procedure

Chapter 4: Modifications of the Alveograph Procedure

Chapter 5: Interpretation of the Alveogram

Chapter 6: Factors Influencing Alveograms

Chapter 7: Calibration

CHAPTER 1

The Chopin Alveograph

In 1905, Hungarian scientist Jenö von Hankoczy designed an apparatus that became known as Hankoczy’s gluten tester (Hankoczy 1920). The apparatus provided a means for pressing moist, crude gluten into a thin sheet between two plates that each had a round opening 2 cm in diameter in the middle. The plates, with gluten pressed in between, then were mounted in a device that joined the lower plate to a vessel into which air could be compressed, while the upper plate joined another vessel from which air would be displaced. Air in the lower vessel was compressed by introducing mercury from a bulb elevated to a height that provided enough pressure to stretch the gluten. The gluten expanded into a bubble through the round opening in the upper plate. A simple gasometer measured the air displaced from the upper vessel by the expansion of the gluten bubble. Thus, the maximum volume of the bubble before it burst could be measured.

Hankoczy later improved this instrument so that the pressure of the air in the lower vessel also could be measured, thus improving the precision of the evaluation of the strength of the gluten sample. A later version of this testing device allowed a disk of dough to be stretched instead of a disk of gluten. Because the importance of temperature in the rheological testing of doughs had not yet been recognized, none of these early instruments had any temperature control.

In the 1920s, Marcel Chopin became interested in the possibility of using dough-testing instruments in place of baking tests to assess the baking quality of French wheats. With no prior knowledge of Hankoczy’s developments, he attempted to develop a test that would simulate, as closely as possible, the process that dough undergoes in bread baking.

Chopin’s approach was based on the then-current concept of the physical condition of developed dough and its changes during the bread-baking process. He considered the dough coming out of a mixer to be in a more-or-less compact state that then was transformed into thin membranes during fermentation and baking. These membranes solidified or were set by heat in the oven and divided bread into innumerable cells filled with gas. If the loaf was well developed, the membranes were thought to have been stretched to the limit of their ability to withstand the mechanical forces set up during baking. The more easily the dough could be drawn into a thin sheet, the more complete would be the development of the loaf.

Based on this model, Chopin designed an extensimeter to measure the plasticity of materials, especially wheat flour dough (Chopin 1921). Four years later, Bailey and Le Vesconte (1924) published an English version of the original French description of this extensimeter. The extensimeter was designed to measure 1) the tenacity of the dough, estimated by the effort necessary to force a uniform cylinder of dough to take a definite form in a fixed period of time, and 2) the ability of the dough to be stretched into a thin membrane. To accomplish these measurements, the dough had to be in the form of a small cylinder, firmly attached to the apparatus and held at constant temperature, and the law of the variation of the force to which the dough was subjected had to be uniform in all trials, because the material tested was irreversibly deformed by the applied force.

The original version of the instrument was designed to meet all the above conditions. Later modifications of the original extensimeter gave better control over the size of the dough test piece and better recording of the air pressure at any time during the test (Chopin 1927). The distance between the two plates, and hence the dough thickness, was adjusted to 2.6 mm. Air pressure for stretching the dough piece was supplied by allowing water to flow from a bottle into a graduated buret.

Up to this time, no dough mixer was attached to the instrument. A homogeneous dough was made by mixing 333 g of flour, 5 g of sodium chloride, and 163 mL of water at 25°C for 8 min in a small mechanical mixer. The desirable flour moisture content was approximately 15%. Flour moisture was allowed to vary by up to 1% without adjusting the dough proportions.

In Chopin’s original extensimeter, dough was rolled into a cylinder from which sections were cut for testing. Later, Bailey and Le Vesconte (1924) described the dough preparation procedure as follows: The mixed dough was removed from the machine, rolled out into a sheet about 18 mm thick on a glass plate, brushed lightly with oil, covered with a damp cloth, and allowed to stand for 25 min. Test pieces 50 mm in diameter and 18 mm thick were cut with a metal cylinder and taken for testing.

In the 1930s, Chopin (1935, 1937) designed a unique dough mixer for use with his extensimeter. The mixer had a hinged side arranged so that the force exerted against it by the developing dough was registered on a chart. The force was a function of the relative plasticity of the dough and changed progressively during mixing. On the opposite side of the mixer bowl, Chopin designed a gate that could be opened to create a horizontal slot 6 cm wide. When the dough was mixed to its optimum strength, the motor driving the mixing blade was reversed, the gate was opened, and a flat band of dough was extruded under a roller onto a template. Portions of the dough were cut off and flattened with a metal roller between guides that determined the thickness of the pieces.

Chopin gradually improved his extensimeter until it developed into what is known today as the Chopin Alveograph (Table 1.1). The instrument is manufactured by Chopin Technologies, Villeneuve la Garenne, France. In 1982, the manufacturers presented a new model, the alveograph MA 82 (Fig. 1.1), followed in 1987 by the MA 87 (Fig. 1.2). The MA 95 was an improvement on the MA 87, with an automatic inflation of the bubble. In 1998, Chopin developed the alveograph NG series, introducing the consistograph and the alveoconsistograph (Fig. 1.3). Table 1.2 summarizes the specifications of the Chopin Alveograph.

TABLE 1.1

Different Alveograph Types Since 1982

TABLE 1.2

Chopin Alveograph Specifications