Farinograph

In baking, a farinograph measures specific properties of flour. It was first developed and launched in 1928. The farinograph is a tool used for measuring the shear and viscosity of a mixture of flour and water. The primary units of the farinograph are Brabender Units, an arbitrary unit of measuring the viscosity of a fluid. The farinograph is a variation of the Brabender Plastograph that has been specialized for the baking industry, and it is used around the world for the objective measurement of a variety of flours.

A baker can formulate end products by using the farinograph's results to determine the following:

The farinograph is drawn on a curved graph with the vertical axis labeled in Brabender Units (BU) and the horizontal axis labeled as time in minutes. The graph is generally hockey-stick shaped, with the curve being more or less acute depending on the strength of the gluten in the flour.

The points of interest on the graph are fivefold:

The Farinograph is used worldwide by bakers and food technicians in building bakery formulations. The farinograph gives bakers a good snapshot of the flour's properties and how the flour will react in different stages of baking, which helps them pick a certain flour for any given purpose. Millers use the Brabender Farinograph to access the properties of the flour, to ascertain whether changes need to be made in the mill. The miller also uses the farinograph to prepare dough for further testing for extensibility after a resting period (akin to proofing) with the Brabender Extensograph.

The industrial application of these five points is far reaching. A baker may use, for example, the arrival time as a bare minimum time when planning full product floor time for a batch of dough. A baker may also use MTI as guideline to judge the response of a dough to the addition of other ingredients. Peak time may be used as a target mix time for optimal gluten structure and resilience. Stability may be used as a method of determining desired cell structure before irreparable gluten breakdown occurs.

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