Prosopis flour in breadmaking

MARIA J. CORREA; MARIA VICTORIA SALINAS; FACUNDO BIGNE; MARIA CRISTINA FERRERO; CARLA BRITES; MARIA CECILIA PUPPO

Santiago de Chile

Conferencia; II Conferencia Latinoamericana de cereales; 2011

ICC-Granotec

Trees of the genus Prosopis are native to the semi arid regions of north western of Argentine due totheir drought and heat tolerance. Prosopis pods were an important component in diets of indigenous people of this area. The flour obtained from Prosopis pods is brown, sweet and has a taste and aromasimilar to cafe or cacao. In this work a physicochemical characterization of a commercial prosopisflour and the performance of wheat flour-prosopis flour mixtures in breadmaking were studied. Dough rheological behaviour was tested through: farinograph, reometry and texture profile analysis(TPA); and bread quality through the measurement of specific volume, crust color and texture ofcrumb. Prosopis flour levels used were: 10 %, 15%, 20% and 30%, andwheat flour was used as control. The farinographic water absorption, development time and the degree of softening increasedwhen prosopis flour was used, whereas the farinographic stability decrease. Dough TPA showed that the used of prosopis flour led to softer, less consistent and elastic doughs whereas cohesiveness wassimilar to control dough. In oscillatory dinamic assays doughs whith prosopis flour showed lowervalues of G´( elastic module) and G´´ (viscous module) than control dough. In the bredmaking assaypan breads were performed. Breads with increasing levels of prosopis flour showed lower specificvolume values and drier crumbs than control bread, reaching the lowest values with a 30% ofprosopis flour level. Significantly higher values of crumb hardness, consistence, resilience andchewiness were obtained using increasing levels of prosopis flour. The use of prosopis flour led tolow bread quality, suggesting the use of bread improvers could be neccesary in breadmaking. Despite of this, prosopis flour led to a particular taste and aroma that has to be tested with a sensorypanel to evaluate consumer acceptability. Nevertheless, this flour due to aroma properties and that isa source of proteins of high value would have a high potencial of application in other type of bakeryproducts.