Enhancement of Starch-Based Gluten-Free Breads with Wholegrain Pearl Millet Flour: Physical and Sensory Characterization
Cereal milling, whole flour, baking product, physical property, overall acceptability
Starch-based breads closely mimic wheat bread, but they need to be more nutritious while maintaining their inherent bread-like functional characteristics. In this study, whole pearl millet flour (PMF) was added to a starch-based bread formulation to enrich it with fibers and protein. The whole PMF flour was obtained using a combination of laboratory roller and hammer mills, as well as appropriate sieves to obtain particles ≤ 0.250 mm. The addition of PMF affected the properties of the base flour (BF), the dough, and the gluten-free bread (GFB). In the BF, the setback viscosity decreased significantly, from 6379 to 1354 mPa·s, and water absorption decreased from 1.75 to 1.23 g/g. In the freshly kneaded dough, the elastic (G') and storage (G'') moduli decreased from 168.3 to 17.8 kPa for G' and from 36.3 to 4.3 kPa for G''. During fermentation, the specific volume of the dough increased with the addition of more PMF. The resulting GFBs showed decreased moisture content, and those with the highest specific volume were those made with GFB-10% PMF and GFB-30% PMF (2.68 and 2.56 cm3/g, respectively). The overall acceptability result highlights the existence of two acceptance profiles among consumers, depending on the PMF addition, one that prefers breads with less millet content and another with more, the latter because it presents differentiated color attributes (L* = 62.7-57, a* = 0.46-1.21, b* = 12.0-11.4) and hardness (HA = 21.2-25.3 N). The results of this study suggest that the formulation with GFB-30% PMF, being closer to GFB-Commercial, showed consistent acceptance among the different consumer segments, 7.30 for Cluster (1) and 6.32 for Cluster (2), configuring itself as a promising alternative for the design of innovative breads.