Browsing by Subject "oat milling"

Oats (Avena sativa L.) are increasing their popularity as a food ingredient since they have excellent nutritional value and great applicability in various food categories. Oats have been mainly used as feed and their food processing properties have not been studied as extensively as of the other cereal grains. Previous studies indicate that oat milling process can cause changes in the carbohydrate quality and properties of raw material. The aim of this Master’s thesis was to understand the impact of oat milling process and dry fractionation on oat ingredient characteristics in 10 samples representing Finnish oat varieties. The selected oat ingredients were non-heated oat groats, oat flour produced by industrial scale milling process and starch-rich fraction obtained from the oat flour by air classification aiming at bran-endosperm separation. The hypothesis was that the oat milling process as well as fractionation affect the physicochemical properties of oat ingredients and that the different oat raw materials may differ regarding their carbohydrate properties and processing behaviour. Dietary fibre, damaged starch and amylose contents of the oat ingredients were analysed. To understand the physicochemical properties of different oat ingredients, the pasting properties were measured with Rapid Visco Analyser (RVA). As expected, oat milling affected both quality and physicochemical properties of the oat raw materials. Milling caused a significant increase in the damaged starch content and caused changes in almost all pasting parameters. Furthermore, sample-dependent behaviour was observed in pasting properties. The oat samples showed differing behaviour during dry fractionation. The pasting properties of the air classified starch-rich fractions were different from the raw material oat flour. These results confirm that different oat raw materials exhibit different behaviour during oat milling process and that the milling process has a significant impact on physicochemical characteristics of oats.