1 3 Eur Food Res Technol DOI 10.1007/s00217-016-2663-7 ORIGINAL PAPER Components of wheat flour as activator of commercial enzymes for bread improvement Cristian De Gobba 1 · Karsten Olsen 1 · Leif H. Skibsted 1 Received: 11 November 2015 / Revised: 1 February 2016 / Accepted: 13 February 2016 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 Introduction By 2050 the population is expected to reach 9 billion peo- ple, and therefore, the demand for processed food, like bread, is expected to grow [1]. Wheat is one of the main ingredients for bread making and one of the most used cereals worldwide. In 2013, world production of wheat was 713 million tons, making it the third most produced cereal after maize and rice according to FAO. With continuing climate changes, a shortage of wheat is expected [2], and this emphasizes the requirement for alternative sources of flour and starch. Cassava is a crop grown in Latin America and Africa of which the root has the potential to partially substitute wheat flour in bread, but its rather poor baking properties are a major challenge [3]. Studies have been per- formed in order to get the acceptable bread quality by mix- ing different ratios of cassava and wheat flour [3–5]. As an example, a content of 30 % cassava flour has been found to give good results, as evaluated by sensory analysis [3]. Different exogenous enzymes are commercially avail- able and often used in modern bread production to pro- vide breads loafs of high volume, improve crust colour, and maintain bread freshness [6]. Therefore, exogenous enzymes can be added to composite flour to improve the quality of the baked products, and use of enzymes may even allow an increase in percentage of cassava in such composite baked products. In a study it was seen that add- ing malt as external source of α-amylase increased the quality of the bread baked with composite flour made from cassava and wheat [5]. The addition of exogenous enzymes (like xylanases and amylases) to the composite flours could be expect to improve the quality of bread, although the quality of bread from composite flour may not reach the quality of bread made from wheat flour alone. There are mainly two reasons for an expected lower quality of bread Abstract Aqueous extracts of wheat flour and of flour made from 30 % cassava and 70 % wheat were found to influence the activity of amylases (Fungamyl ® and Nova- myl ® were tested) and xylanases (Panzea ® and Pentopan Mono ® were tested), with an activation of Fungamyl ® and Panzea ® by a factor of two, while extract from cas- sava flour alone had no effect. A fractionation of the active extracts showed that high molecular weight components from wheat were responsible for increased activity, which, for Fungamyl ® , was sensitive to heating of the extract at 100 °C for 15 min. For Panzea ® , instead, the increase in activity was comparable for boiled and non-boiled extract. Osborne fractionation of the wheat extract showed that the highest increase in Fungamyl ® activity could be assigned to salt solubilized components in the extract, while Panzea ® showed an increased activity in presence of ethanol extract and propanol extract. Among the most abundant proteins in the active fractions, globulins were identified by LC–MS/ MS as an enhancer of Fungamyl ® activity, while the heat- insensitive component involved in enhancement of Panzea ® remained unexplained. Keywords Cassava · Wheat · Xylanases · Amylases * Leif H. Skibsted ls@food.ku.dk 1 Department of Food Science, Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen, Rolighedsvej 30, 1958 Frederiksberg C, Denmark