78 KANSAS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE, 



PROPERTIES AND COMPOSITION OF SOME TYPICAL 



FLOURS. 



By W. E. Matthewson, Kansas Agricultural College, Manhattan. 

 Read before the Academy, at Topeka, December 30, 1904. 



\ N exact knowledge of the connection between the chemical cora- 

 -'-^ position of flour, as shown by our present methods of analysis, 

 and its properties, judged from the bread-maker's standpoint, can 

 hardly be said to have been approached. No argument is necessary 

 to establish its importance; and while no great number of investiga- 

 tors have worked on the problem, this is, perhaps, due to the fact that 

 one person has not usually the facilities to attack both aspects of it. 

 The field is also rendered somewhat less inviting by a lack of exact 

 analytical methods. Those adopted by the Association of Official 

 Agricultural Chemists doubtless include most of the best ones known 

 at present, but perhaps the best thing that can be said of the results 

 obtained by them is that they are comparable with each other. 



In the present experiment samples of eight brands of flour of dif- 

 ferent grades were taken and carefully analyzed. The samples were 

 also submitted to bread-making tests in the department of domestic 

 science by Prof. Henrietta W. Calvin and Miss Ula Dow. Consider- 

 able care was exercised, especially in the estimation of the different 

 proteids, to carry out a series of determinations together, so that the 

 effect of variations of temperature, etc., would be largely eliminated 

 and the results be strictly comparable. The determinations of moisture, 

 ash, ether extract, crude fiber, crude protein and nitrogen-free extract 

 were made by the official methods ; those of the nitrogenous sub- 

 stances, by the method of G. L. Teller, now of the Chicago Institute 

 of Milling and Baking Technology, and published in bulletin No. 5S 

 of the Arkansas Experiment Station. Some minor modifications 

 were made in these, such as the substitution of Gooch filters for paper 

 ones wherever practicable'. In the determination of nitrogen, which 

 forms the final step in all these separations, decinormal hydrochloric 

 acid was used to collect the distillate and was titrated with decinormal 

 ammonia, using a 10 cc. burette graduated in hundredths. Total 

 nitrogen, however, was determined in the usual way, with seminormal 

 acid and decinormal ammonia from an ordinary burette. 



The flours taken were those of different grades from two well-known 

 milling firms. The first four. Big 4, Golden Rod, Fortis, and Low 

 Grade, were four grades of hard-wheat flour from the Page Milling 

 Company, of Topeka. The others, Topeka High Patent, Topeka 



