F

Enzymatic improvement

of the quality of pasta and noodles

by Lutz Popper, Sabine Clauen and Martina Mollenhauer, Mhlenchemie

GmbH & Co KG, Germany

he limited availability of durum wheat

and its relatively high price induce
the search for alternatives that help to
save costs while maintaining quality.
The addition of vital wheat gluten
is a viable but expensive method,
and the application of hydrocolloids
such as guar gum is limited to certain
applications, e.g. instant noodle flour.
The improving effect of specific emulsifiers and the recently
discovered beneficial action of certain enzymes will be the
subject of this article.
The properties of pasta and noodle dough differ greatly from
those of yeast leavened dough, particularly concerning the lack of
gas bubbles that are not desirable in pasta and noodle processing
but have to be stabilised and entrapped in bread dough and the
like. Instead of dough elasticity, plasticity is preferred, and staling
is hardly an issue. Nevertheless, some properties seem to be
useful in both applications, for instance protein stability.
In the case of bread, this is a useful trait for volume yield, while
in pasta and noodles, good gluten improves cooking tolerance
and the eating properties. There are also parallels between the
processes in respect of starch: in bread making, emulsifiers such
as monoglycerides are used to retard the staling of bread through
interaction with starch. In pasta and noodles, the same emulsifier
improves cooking stability and reduces cooking losses, because it
retards the gelatinisation and thus solubilisation of starch.
Some enzymes familiar from the field of baking have shown
themselves to be useful in pasta and noodle applications too.
While hemicellulases can reduce the viscosity of the dough and
thus the water addition rate (saving money in the production
of dry noodles), some carboxyl esterases have turned out to be
very efficient in improving and modifying pasta and noodles.
They not only improve the cooking tolerance but also activate the
flours own bleaching system, lipoxygenase, resulting in brighter

42 | Milling and Grain

Figure 1: Firmness of cooked pasta made from hard wheat flour

as affected by carboxyl esterase (Pastazym Plus) Control: Pasta
from HRW flour without added enzymes

Figure 2: Stickiness of cooked pasta made from hard wheat flour

as affected by carboxyl esterase (Pastazym Plus)
Control: Pasta from HRW flour without added enzymes

F
and less speckled end products. If yellow pasta and noodles
are preferred, these enzymes create a brighter background for
colouring agents such as carotene or curcuma.

Materials and methods

HRW wheat flour

Protein: 11.7 percent d.b., wet gluten: 26.8 percent, Falling
number: 486 s
Durum wheat semolina
Protein: 13.1 percent d.b., wet gluten: 27.1 percent, Falling
number: > 1,000 s

Preparation of the spaghetti

1,000 g of HRW flour or durum semolina (provenience

unknown) were premixed with water (15 C) in a Hobart
laboratory mixer at slow speed for five minutes and then kneaded
for 10 minutes in a Sela machine type TR-75W at atmospheric
pressure to form a crumbly dough. The dough was then pressed
through a Teflon dice to form spaghetti with a diameter of 1.9 mm
+/- 0.2 mm. The spaghetti was dried in a climate chamber (Binder
KBF 240) at 35 C and 60 percent relative humidity for 24 hours.
The noodles were prepared for testing by cooking 100 grams in
one litre of boiling water (0.5 percent salt) for eight minutes. The
cooking water was recovered for further testing. The noodles
were cooled down by rinsing with one litre of cold water (10C)
for five seconds.

Textural evaluation

Firmness and the stickiness of the spaghetti were tested with the
texture analyser TA XT2, equipped with a Light Knife Blade,
according to AACC method 66-50.

Determination of cooking loss

The cooking water was allowed to cool to room temperature

and then stirred with a whisk to form a uniform suspension. 10
ml of this was pipetted into conical tubes (Fisherbrand, capacity
10 ml) and closed with a lid. The tubes were centrifuged at four
C for 15 min at 4,590 min-1 (4,546 g; Heraeus Multifuge 3SR+,
Thermo Scientific). After centrifugation the samples were kept
for 24 h at 5.3 C.

Results and discussion

Improvement of the texture

A major advantage of durum wheat flour pasta as compared
to hard and soft wheat flour is the superior cooking tolerance
and the uniform, firm texture of the cooked product. Carboxyl
esterase is able to increase the firmness of hard wheat noodles
significantly. In previous trials, pasta from soft (German) wheat
even achieved the firmness of durum pasta (data not shown).
In the trials presented, the effect was not as strong, but still the
enzyme reduced the difference in firmness between durum and
hard wheat pasta by more than 50 percent (Figure 1).
Carboxyl esterase splits fatty acids from the glycerol backbone
of the glycerides, phospho- and glycolipids of the wheat flour.
The resulting molecules are known to have a stronger interaction
with starch, resulting in a higher gelatinisation temperature.
It is also described in the literature that lipids in general and
lyso-lipids in particular associate with proteins during the
preparation of (bread) dough. This results in an improvement of
protein coherence, providing better volume yields in baking. If
similar effects occurred during the preparation of pasta dough in
spite of its low moisture content, it would strengthen the pasta
texture even further. Our results shown in Figure one confirm

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21.05.2015
June 2015
| 4310:17:47

Durum

Control

100

200

300

Dosage Pastazym Plus - ppm (flour base)

Figure 3: Effect of carboxyl esterase (Pastazym Plus) on cooking losses from hard wheat pasta (starch leakage into cooking water)

The reduced stickiness of cooked pasta (Figure two) can also

be explained by the rise in the starch gelatinisation temperature
caused by carboxyl esterase. The reduction of starch leakage
(Figure three) probably adds to this effect because both effects
reduce the amount of free gelatinised starch in the cooking water,
which would otherwise increase the amount of sticky starch on
the surface of the noodles.

(control) resulted in a much higher sedimentation volume. The

reduction of the sediments decreased with increasing amounts of
the carboxyl esterase Pastazym Plus. We assume three possible
reasons for the reduced cooking losses:
Strengthening of the dough structure through delaying the
gelatinisation point;
Additional cross-linking of the dough components through
lipoxygenase-induced reactions, and
Stronger lipid - flour interaction.
These effects seem to improve the binding of starch and protein
to the noodle structure, thus reducing the leakage.

Reduction of cooking losses

Optimisation of grist costs

the possible strengthening effect of carboxyl esterases in pasta

processing too.

Reduction of stickiness

Not surprisingly, durum wheat pasta showed the lowest

cooking losses as determined by centrifugation of the cooking
water (leftmost tube in Figure 3), whereas untreated HRW flour

Figure four: Cost advantage achieved by using Pastazym Plus

(200 ppm) in pasta. Calculation based on data from April 2015.

As we have experienced in the recent past, the prices for wheat

are sometimes subject to extreme fluctuations. When the price
for high quality hard wheat differs substantially from that for
less strong wheat, additives and in particular enzymes can help
to lower the cost of a flour mix for pasta and noodles because
they make it possible to reduce the use of expensive flour and use
weaker flour instead, e.g. soft instead of hard wheat flour or hard
wheat flour instead of durum semolina (Figure four).
Care has to be taken not to adjust only the rheological data or
the processing properties or the quality of the end product, but
to obtain a total performance close to that of the superior wheat
flour in order to avoid problems at any stage of production and
marketing.

Outlook: improvement of pasta made from durum

wheat?

Durum semolina is the best raw material for high quality pasta
production and cannot be improved. Or can it? According to the
data collected by Marchylo et al. (2004), the cooking score of
durum wheat pasta correlates strongly with the protein content
of the durum wheat (Figure five). But from the same data it
can also be derived that there is substantial fluctuation in pasta
quality, in particular in pasta made from high-protein durum
wheat. So we believe that even durum wheat flour leaves room
for improvement, since improvers can be used to achieve a more
consistent end product quality. Trials with various durum wheat
qualities will have to be performed in the future.

References
Figure 5: Impact of durum wheat protein content on pasta
quality (modif. from Marchylo et al., 2004)

44 | Milling and Grain

B. A. Marchylo and J. E. Dexter, and L. J. Malcolmson, 2004.

Improving the texture of pasta. In: Texture in food - Volume 2:
Solid foods

Celebrating the
90th anniversary
of Mhlenchemie

Innovations in flour improvement

for more than 90 years.
There is scarcely a basic food in which the quality of the
raw material has such a decisive infl uence on processing
characteristics and the attributes of the fi nished product
as wheat fl our. Analytical quality data provide important
indications, but it is the reaction of the dough to baking
that shows what a fl our can really do. Our fl our improvers
build quality into fl our, strictly according to the basic
principles of flour improvement: doughs must be within
the rheological and enzymatic optimum, and the rheological
and enzymatic optimum must be properly balanced.
Adjustment of low gluten or protein content
Optimization of wheat mixtures etc.
Correction of weak or excessively strong wheat varieties
Regulation of qualities resulting in wet, weak doughs

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