plants use pretty much the same process. There’s a fork in the road of the flowchart, with slurry for syrups (“sweeteners”) veering off to one side and slurry for starches veering off to the other. What’s cool is that both forks lead to Twinkies. Dedicated starch plants use a softer type of corn than syrup plants, called waxy maize or waxy corn. This corn was bred for seed during World War II from a 1908 Chinese import, when Southeast Asian supplies of tapioca, the more common source of cooking starch, were cut off. Potatoes, rice, and wheat are also common starch sources that are sometimes blended, which is why food labels often say just “food starch.” At a starch plant, this liquid starch is dried, chemically modified, or roasted so there’s something for everyone: plain cornstarch, modified cornstarch, and dextrins. (Some plants make more than four hundred different kinds of starches for industrial and food uses for far more products than Twinkies.) But as far as Twinkies are concerned, there are only three kinds of starch.
P LAIN AND S IMPLE
Plain cornstarch, a fine white powder, is what you buy in the supermarket. Since it starts out as a milky soup, the challenge is to dry it. And, since the water cannot be boiled out, nor can the starch be heated too high (because it would swell into a soft, pudding-like mass, similar to what you’d get if you added cornstarch to hot gravy), the starch solution is “dewatered” through massive presses and centrifuges. At National Starches’ Indianapolis plant, the moist granules are then conveyed into the bottom of machinery so extraordinary, it calls to mind a sort of techno-Indianapolis answer to the St. Louis Gateway Arch. This is the ring dryer, a bright silver vertical circle with a 150-foot diameter that blasts the starch on a roller-coaster ride in a bed of warm (but not too hot) air and then sends it off to be packed into bags or rail-cars, all without cooking it by mistake.
Food starches have been separated from vegetables since ancient Chinese and Egyptian times (wheat starch was used to make papyrus, cosmetics, and must have helped keep the pleats in the pharaohs’ royal outfits, but there was no corn there—corn is an American thing). Refining corn for food use started in the United States with the founding of Thomas Kingsford’s eponymous Oswego, New York, firm in 1848. By 1880 it was the largest company of its kind in the world, with a thousand employees making thirty-five tons of cornstarch daily. Kingsford’s Starch, originally used primarily for laundry, was (along with baking powder) one of the first truly national consumer products that was advertised extensively, and the firm is credited with revolutionary innovations in corn refining that led right up to today’s modern plants. One of the post–World War II accomplishments occurred when drying tables hundreds of yards long were replaced with centrifuges that spun the water out; another was angling the “steep tank” walls so that new corn could be added (on the side) and continuously removed (from the center). These seemingly simple changes allowed for faster, continuous processing with less labor, assuring a low and popular price.
Kingsford’s merged with Argo, a Nebraska firm, in 1899, but both brands are still sold today, a testimony to consumer loyalty. The catch is that Kingsford’s brand is only found in Philadelphia, southern and northern California (though apparently not in central California), Denver, and, in a considerable leap of logic as well as ocean, Hawaii. You gotta love those marketing guys.
Cornstarch can be found in products as varied as mayonnaise, gumdrops, and chocolate candy fillings. Because it soaks up moisture so well, cornstarch, used dry, keeps confectioners’ sugar and packaged cake mixes dry and free-flowing. It works so well in baking powder that it is found in all the major brands, and sets the flavors on the surface of snack foods like Wise ® Cheez
P LAIN AND S IMPLE
Plain cornstarch, a fine white powder, is what you buy in the supermarket. Since it starts out as a milky soup, the challenge is to dry it. And, since the water cannot be boiled out, nor can the starch be heated too high (because it would swell into a soft, pudding-like mass, similar to what you’d get if you added cornstarch to hot gravy), the starch solution is “dewatered” through massive presses and centrifuges. At National Starches’ Indianapolis plant, the moist granules are then conveyed into the bottom of machinery so extraordinary, it calls to mind a sort of techno-Indianapolis answer to the St. Louis Gateway Arch. This is the ring dryer, a bright silver vertical circle with a 150-foot diameter that blasts the starch on a roller-coaster ride in a bed of warm (but not too hot) air and then sends it off to be packed into bags or rail-cars, all without cooking it by mistake.
Food starches have been separated from vegetables since ancient Chinese and Egyptian times (wheat starch was used to make papyrus, cosmetics, and must have helped keep the pleats in the pharaohs’ royal outfits, but there was no corn there—corn is an American thing). Refining corn for food use started in the United States with the founding of Thomas Kingsford’s eponymous Oswego, New York, firm in 1848. By 1880 it was the largest company of its kind in the world, with a thousand employees making thirty-five tons of cornstarch daily. Kingsford’s Starch, originally used primarily for laundry, was (along with baking powder) one of the first truly national consumer products that was advertised extensively, and the firm is credited with revolutionary innovations in corn refining that led right up to today’s modern plants. One of the post–World War II accomplishments occurred when drying tables hundreds of yards long were replaced with centrifuges that spun the water out; another was angling the “steep tank” walls so that new corn could be added (on the side) and continuously removed (from the center). These seemingly simple changes allowed for faster, continuous processing with less labor, assuring a low and popular price.
Kingsford’s merged with Argo, a Nebraska firm, in 1899, but both brands are still sold today, a testimony to consumer loyalty. The catch is that Kingsford’s brand is only found in Philadelphia, southern and northern California (though apparently not in central California), Denver, and, in a considerable leap of logic as well as ocean, Hawaii. You gotta love those marketing guys.
Cornstarch can be found in products as varied as mayonnaise, gumdrops, and chocolate candy fillings. Because it soaks up moisture so well, cornstarch, used dry, keeps confectioners’ sugar and packaged cake mixes dry and free-flowing. It works so well in baking powder that it is found in all the major brands, and sets the flavors on the surface of snack foods like Wise ® Cheez
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