Maize germ was kindly provided by a local mill (Karanika,
Alexandreia, Greece) as a by-product and subjected to milling
(Braun ZK100, Kronberg im Taunus, Germany) for 30 s. The
resulting flour was separated into three fractions by employing
sieves of a mesh size of 0.85 and 2 mm. Part of each fraction with
desired particle size (dp) value was initially soaked in appropriate
amount of deionized water to reach the desired water-to-solid ratio
(w) value, at 25 C for 2 h.