Production of wheat gluten hydrolyzates by enzymatic process at high pressure.

A novel process for producing wheat gluten enzyme hydrolyzates (WGEHs) was developed, using combinations of Flavourzyme 500MG, Alcalase 2.4L, Protamex, and Marugoto E at the high pressure of 300 MPa, and the resultant hydrolyzates were analyzed for electrophoretic and hydrolytic properties. It was found that multiple-enzyme treatments increased the proportion of the electrophoretic bands less than 5 kDa in the hydrolyzates greatly both at ambient pressure and 300 MPa compared with one-enzyme hydrolysis. The contents of total soluble solids in the WGEHs increased considerably up to 89.75% according to the increase in the number of enzymes used at 300 MPa compared with 79.37% found for the ambient-pressure hydrolysis. These characteristics together with the contents of soluble nitrogen and free amino acids clearly indicated that the high-pressure enzymatic process of this study is an efficient method for obtaining WGEHs with increased degree of hydrolysis.