Are we on the cusp of a specialty flours mega-trend?

The rise of specialty flours with nutritional and textural functionality is opening doors for food formulators in a range of applications, from bakery to soups, and the potential is impressive, says Corn Products International’s VP of research.

Speaking with FoodNavigator-USA at the recent IFT Annual Meeting and Food Expo in New Orleans, Corn Products International‘s John Leighton discussed the potential of flour with special functionality, from process tolerance and storage stability to nutrition.

“We are on the cusp of a mega-trend,” said Leighton.

“If you look at label claims and consumer preferences, the growing wave is toward to putting functionality into foods using ingredients consumers would recognize as being in their own kitchen cupboard.”

By understanding how the various components in the grain interact, and how these interactions can be manipulated, specialty flour with built-in functionality can be produced, he said, and all this and “continue to allow our customers to label it as ‘flour’ on the label”.