Prime starch was extracted from soft and hard wheat flours and ball-milled to produce 100% damaged starch. Small amounts of the ball-milled starch or a pre-gelatinized starch were added to sugar-snap cookie formulations. Other cookie doughs were produced from prime starch only (no flour) with small amounts of the ball-milled starch added. Starch damages of the resulting substituted soft and hard wheat flours and soft and hard wheat prime starches were determined and compared to diameters of sugar-snap cookies produced from the control and treatments.

Soft wheat flour and starches produced larger diameter cookies than their hard wheat counterpart at all levels of damaged starch. Both sources of damaged starch (ball-milled or pre-gelatinized starch) had similar effects on cookie diameter. Cookies produced from all starch (no flour) were similar to their respective flour controls at approximately 8% damaged starch. To produce the same size cookie as that produced by soft wheat flour and starch, hard wheat flour and starch cookie formulations required less damaged starch and had lower alkaline water retention than did the soft wheat flour and starch cookie formulations. Other flours were treated with chlorine gas to pH 4.8. Pre-gelatinized starch (approximately 5%) was required to reduce the cookie diameter as much as chlorine treatment did. Results suggest unique quality differences between soft and hard wheat starch as they function in sugar-snap cookie baking. The functional results of those differences are not adequately quantified by the estimation of damaged starch level.