From conventional to Bio Bud: starches and pre-gelatinized starches and flours

For applications with and without gluten – our products based on wheat, spelt, and other grains and legumes offer many possibilities for special creations.

Organic products are as trendy as they have ever been, and retail sales of organic products just kept rising in 2023. Whether Conventional, EU Organic, or Bio Bud, with our long-standing partner Kröner Stärke, we offer

• Starches
• Gluten
• Pre-gelatinized flours
• Pre-gelatinized starches

from many varieties of grains and legumes. These products are highly technologically versatile.

Wheat starch – the starch for dough-based products

There is a good reason why wheat is so widely used in baked goods and other dough-based products. Aside from gluten, there are also benefits to be had from wheat starch, which is even able to compensate to some extent for an absence of gluten. Wheat starch offers numerous advantages over other hydrocolloids:

• Greater dough elasticity
• Better dough cohesion
• Better chewing resistance
• More consistent crumb structure
• Neutral, slightly earthy, bread-typical flavour
• Clean Label
• Gluten content below 20 ppm achievable, allowing “gluten-free” declaration

Wheat starch in gluten-free products

The advantages of wheat starches apply to both gluten-containing and gluten-free applications, but the effectiveness of (gluten-free) wheat starch is most appreciable in gluten-free products. It is not uncommon that wheat starch gets omitted along with gluten, even though this is not advisable from a technological point of view and is not necessary for declaration purposes. Instead of wheat flour and wheat starch, often a mixture of starches and other non-clean-label hydrocolloids are used, and there are various disadvantages to taking such an approach.

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Pre-gelatinized wheat starches – the perfect complement to native starches in baked goods

Unlike gluten, native starches only properly start to swell under the influence of heat. Accordingly, in gluten-free doughs, it is common to use other cold-swelling hydrocolloids in addition to starches. These are supposed to improve binding and processability and prolong freshness.

Gluten-free pre-gelatinized wheat starches combine the advantages of gluten-free wheat starch with those of cold-swelling hydrocolloids, thus allowing a number of improvements:

• Water-binding even when cold – similar to gluten:
  For adjusting consistency to improve machinability as well as freeze-thaw stability of doughs and batters
   
• High water incorporation into doughs:
  For higher dough yield, longer freshness, and softer crumb
   
• Better gas retention of doughs due to greater dough elasticity:
  For shorter processing times and higher process stability and gas retention
   
• Clean Label
   
• Gluten content below 20 ppm achievable, allowing “gluten-free” declaration

In baked goods, especially, pre-gelatinized wheat starches make a perfect complement to native wheat starches. As alternatives to wheat products, in cooperation with Kröner Stärke, we also offer spelt starch, pre-gelatinized spelt starches, and pre-gelatinized flours of various grain types in conventional, organic, and in some cases Bio Bud quality.