Whereas Mom might have a 20-line recipe, the lab follows eight pages of precise guidelines. The guidelines dictate a rapid choreography of movements and measurements sometimes accurate to 0.0001 grams. The work flows from one station to another with quick measurements, notations of findings, precise mixing, precision shaping before second rise. . . The work on noodles proceeds similarly, but with tests for firmness, springiness, cohesiveness and several other characteristics all leading up to noodle scores. Deb Habernicht, who manages the lab, puts all the results together for us as well as U.S. and foreign buyers.
Millers have a specification they want.
We need to make sure the wheats we develop for Montana don't just grow well, but also produce the desired end product. When prospective wheat buyers are on campus, the interaction with the Cereal Quality Lab can be anything from looking at bread wheat mixograms to eating noodles from a big frothing pot. That makes the lab very popular with the Montana Wheat and Barley Committee, a marketing group funded by producers wheat and barley check-off funds. Basically, the goal of the breeding and testing programs is to make sure that MSU produces dual quality wheats, those useful for both bread and noodles. The one thing that has been constant with the Cereal Quality Laboratory for the last three decades in the state is that end-use quality is an integral part of any MSU wheat release, and that is really important to us all.