Soft flour wheat, water, lard, salt, milk, baking soda.

Soft flour wheat, water, whole wheat flour, olive oil, salt, milk, baking soda.

Wheat can be “hard” or “soft” based on its starch content.
The threshed wheat undergoes a series of processing.
Wheat contains: proteins, starch, fats, sugars and enzymes.

“Hard” wheat contains little starch.
Coarsely ground wheat produces the proper bran for making bread dough. Ground wheat is better for the semolina used in polentina;
on the other hand, well-ground wheat results in flour that, high in protein, has gluten that is resistant when soaked in water and is therefore excellent for bread-making.

Flour from “soft” wheat, rich in starch and poor in protein, is perfect for making soft, flaky pastry dough. It is generally blended with hard wheat to make all-purpose flour, which is able to be used for a wide variety of baked goods, including the piadina.

Fats in the germ and bran are eliminated through milling so that the flour has a longer shelf life. This process separates the endosperm, the grain’s cell tissue, which will be ground and sieved several times until the particle of the grain is the right size according to the type of cooking it is meant to be used for. The flour then undergoes bleaching to eliminate the yellowish color due to the presence of xanthophyll. Doing so, however, also removes all of the vitamin E present. The flour must then be fermented with chlorine dioxide. Fermenting the flour improves the quality of dough, making it more resistant and elastic.

Wheat is the most important type of cereal grain because it has protein from the endosperm, GLIADIN and GLUTENIN, which react together upon contact with water in order to form solid and elastic gluten usable for bread making. Such gluten is able to expand to retain carbon dioxide in air pockets, built up during leavening, without bursting.

70% of wheat is made up of starch.
Under the form of granules, it makes up the endosperm and serves as a necessary source of energy to the embryo so it can live and develop.
Granules of starch are formed by two types of molecules: amylase and amylopectin. These granules, when heated during cooking, contribute to the thickening of cooked products.
Damaged granules are then attacked by enzymes that break down starch into the sugars needed for feeding yeast cells.

Fats, despite making up only 1% of wheat, carry an important role in gluten formation because they facilitate the forming of chemical bonds with gliadin and glutenin molecules as well as bonding gluten to granules of starch.
This is how a layered structure is formed. By sliding over each other, these layers give the dough plasticity.

In addition to starch, hemicelluloses and pentosans are among the sugars that make up 2% of wheat. All of these sugars are insoluble and for this reason, by retaining water, help form the structure of bread.
Sugars are needed to nourish the yeast, though because of their low content, it is necessary to add malt. Obtained by germinating grains, malt possesses enzymes such as amylase, able to convert starch into sugar – wheat, too, contains some traces of amylase. It also contains protease and lipase, enzymes capable of “digesting” fats and proteins that don’t, however, have any influence on bread making.

Using fats in dough allows the mass of gluten to break apart, thus making the final product softer and flakier.
As a matter of fact, lard helps to increase dough volume and slows down the loss of moisture.

Added to the piadina dough in order to enhance the flavor, too much salt inhibits the rising of bread since it forms strong chemical bonds with the wheat proteins that make the gluten stronger and less stretchable.
At the same time, however, it inhibits the enzymes’ activities that “digest” the proteins and, doing so, prevents gluten from becoming a sticky mass unable to trap carbon dioxide.