Creep Recovery of Wet Gluten and High‐Molecular‐Weight Glutenin Subunit Composition: Relationship with Viscoelasticity of Dough and Breadmaking Quality of Hard Red Winter Wheat

Effects of high‐molecular‐weight glutenin subunits on viscoelasticity of wet gluten, and its relationships with mixing, extensibility, and breadmaking parameters, were investigated by creep recovery using the Kelvin–Voigt model on 19 hard red winter wheat flours. Gluten samples with Glu‐A1 1 and 2* showed significant differences in retardation time (λ₂), whereas subunit 17+18 in Glu‐B1 showed higher elastic moduli (G ₀, G ₁, and G ₂) and viscosity coefficients (η₀, η₁, and η₂) compared with subunits 7+8 and 7+9. Wheats with Glu‐D1 5+10 had higher values of G ₀, G ₁, G ₂, η₀, η₁, and η₂ compared with Glu‐D1 2+12. Gluten samples were on average 5.5, 3.1, and 1.6 times less stiff than dough when comparing G ₀, G ₁, and G ₂, respectively; these differences suggest that the nongluten components have high influence in the instantaneous and first Kelvin–Voigt elements of the model, and they are manifested more quickly compared with gluten components. Higher explanation of variance of loaf volume was found in parameters η₂ and G ₂ (r = 0.57 and 0.58, respectively, P < 0.0001) compared with η₁ and G ₁ (r = 0.45 and 0.56, P < 0.01 and 0.0001, respectively). These findings indicate that large structures formed primarily by crosslinking and agglomeration of glutenins of long chain sizes (second Kelvin–Voigt element) had major effects on quality compared with short chain sizes (first element).