Dough rheology investigations were undertaken to investigate the effect of large scale deformation characteristics of sheeted dough prepared using oat flour with added gluten and varying the processing conditions. The purpose of these trials was to assess if variations in the processing conditions (composition, kneading and resting) would result in measurable differences in the rheology of the dough sheets.

An Instron Universal Testing Machine was used to measure the force and deformation (elongation). From these fundamental measurements the rheological characteristics such as deformation rate, stress, strain and strain hardening effects were calculated. Measurements were carried out on dough prepared from oat flour blended with gluten flour and sheeted using standard bakery sheeting equipment (twin rollers).

This work has identified that kneading time and gluten content have the greatest effect on the strength and rheology of the sheeted oat/gluten dough. Salt content and flour particle size were also found to have an effect. Resting time, the period of time between dough kneading and testing, was found to affect the strength and rheology of the sheeted oat/gluten dough and an optimal resting time was observed. Strain hardening was observed all of the sheeted oat/gluten dough samples in the study. However, the rate of strain hardening varied with composition, kneading and resting.

This work has shown that both the pilot scale and small scale samples produced similar results, indicating that the small scale process is a useful tool for evaluating the performance of processing at larger scale.