Q. Determine the moisture content in flour?

After undertaking this activity, you will be able to:

• assess the moisture content in the given sample of flour,

• determine the moisture content for dry samples, and

• check the given sample for conformance to the standard for moisture content.

Principle

Moisture content in the flour can be determined by:

i) Oven Drying method, and

ii) Infrared heating

The principle behind each of these methods is given herewith:

Oven drying

This method consists of measuring the weight lost by foods due to evaporation of water. However, loss of weight may not be a true measure, as in the foods high in protein content, only a proportion of "free water" present may be evaporated at the drying temperature. The remaining which is referred to as "bound water" may still remain associated with the proteins present in the food. The proportion of the loss of free water increases as the temperature of drying increases. Thus, it is important to control the conditions of time and temperature during the estimation.