Use of alternative flours to improve nutritional quality of noodles

CS MARTINEZ; BC BUSTOS; PD RIBOTTA; GT PEREZ; AE LEON

Madrid, España

Congreso; 13th ICC Cereal and Bread Congress. Cereals in the 21st century: present and future; 2008

ICC

Nutritional improvement of pasta mainly involves increasing protein and dietary fiber (Marconi and Carcea, 2001). In the last years, different grains from durum wheat have been used in production of particular kinds of pasta with healthy characteristics (Chillo et al., 2007). The aim of this work was to replace bread wheat flour with kañiwa, amaranth and soy flours to enhance protein and fiber contents of pasta, thereby improving their nutritional quality. Kañiwa flour (Ka), amaranth flour (Am) and defatted soy flour (So) were substituted for a portion of bread wheat flour (BW), at levels of 15 and 30%, resulting Ka15, Ka30, Am15, Am30, So15 and So30 respectively. A BW flour noodle was analyzed as Control sample. Noodles were prepared from 50 g of flour, 500 mg of salt and water until appearance, sheeting and handling properties of noodle dough was reach through trial and error. After reducing the thickness of noodle dough sheet, it was cut through cutting rolls into strips approximately 2 mm wide and 15 cm long, and dried at 30ºC for 24 h. Ash, protein and crude fiber of flours were determined. Also, optimum cooking time (OCT), water absorption and cooking loss on cooked pasta were measured. Finally, protein and dietary fiber on dry cooked pasta were analyzed. BW, Ka, Am and So flours presented the following protein values: 13.1, 12.0, 18.6 and 45.4% (dry basis (d.b) respectively; ash values: 1.00, 4.55, 3.32 and 6.99% d.b., respectively; and crude fiber values: 0.3, 4.3, 3.3 and 4.2%, respectively. OCT resulted 7 min for Ka15 and Ka30, 10 min for Am15 and Am30, and 12 min for So15 and 11 min for So30. As alternative flour was incorporated, water absorption and cooking loss values increased compare to control sample, showing the negative effect of those nontraditional flours on pasta quality. The addition of Am, So and Ka flours increased protein and dietary fiber of samples. Protein content of Am15, Am30, So15 and So30 incremented 10, 13, 27 and 66% respectively, compared to control sample. Ka15 and Ka30 did not show higher protein content than control sample due to the protein content of Ka flour was similar than BW flour. Concerning dietary fiber, all samples showed higher values than the control increasing 22, 65, 4, 20, 55 and 103% for Ka15, Ka30, Am15, Am30, So15 and So30, respectively. Even though alternative flours negatively affected noodle quality, acceptable cooking quality parameters were obtained at 15 and 30% substitution level, increasing protein and dietary fiber of pasta and consequently their nutritional value.