Utilisation of Amaranth and Finger Millet as Ingredients in Wheat Dough and Bread for Increased Agro-Food Biodiversity

Abstract

Amaranth and finger millet are important food security crops in Africa but show poor bread making ability, even in composite wheat breads. Malting and steaming are promising approaches to improve composite bread quality, which have not been fully explored yet. Therefore, in this study, wheat was blended with native, steamed or malted finger millet or amaranth in the ratio of 70:30. Wheat/native amaranth (WHE-NAM) and wheat/malted amaranth (WHE-MAM) had longer dough development times and higher dough stabilities, water absorption capacities and farinograph quality numbers than wheat/steamed amaranth (WHE-SAM), wheat/native finger millet (WHE-NFM), wheat/steamed finger millet (WHE-SFM) or wheat/malted finger millet (WHE-MFM). The WHE-NAM and WHE-MAM breads had lower crumb firmness and chewiness, higher resilience and cohesiveness and lighter colours than WHE-NFM, WHE-SFM and WHE-MFM. Starch and protein digestibility of composite breads were not different (p > 0.05) from each other and ranged between 95–98% and 83–91%, respectively. Composite breads had higher ash (1.9–2.5 g/100 g), dietary fibre (5.7–7.1 g/100 g), phenolic acid (60–122 mg/100 g) and phytate contents (551–669 mg/100 g) than wheat bread (ash 1.6 g/100 g; dietary fibre 4.5 g/100 g; phenolic acids 59 mg/100 g; phytate 170 mg/100 g). The WHE-NAM and WHE-MAM breads possessed the best crumb texture and nutritional profile among the composite breads.

Study on Various Treatments to Improve Nutritional and Rheological Properties of Finger Millet Porridge

“…The phytate content was considered the most critical antinutritional factor of the FM flours and ranged between 0.24 ± 0.07 and 0.79 ± 0.04 g/100 g dry matter (DM). These values are generally agreeing with, , or even lower than, , previous results for FM. Phytate was significantly higher in WM flours compared to the DH ones.…”

“…49 However, another preceding study also found no effect of MTD or STD on the protein content. 35 Furthermore, a reduced protein content due to HTT was reported by some authors, 45 while others found an increase. 14 Similar to the present study, Dharmaraj and Malleshi 10 found no impact of HTT on the protein content.…”

“…This is generally in line with previously reported contents of TS and DS in FM. 35 Some differences became evident for the content of resistant starch (RS), with significant reductions after STD and MTD treatments compared to the corresponding NAT flours. This agrees with previous results, reporting an increase in starch digestibility due to malting or steaming of finger or foxtail millets and thus reducing the content of RS.…”

The Effect of Stabilized Rice Bran Addition on Physicochemical, Sensory, and Techno-Functional Properties of Bread

“…The reduction of gluten content as a result of SRB incorporation causes a lower dough strength and smaller capacity to resist deformation, results also observed in other studies when wheat flour was replaced with SRB [ 32 , 33 ]. The reduced deformation energy observed for doughs containing SRB was attributed to the lower glutenin content and dough strengths as previously reported in breads enriched in maize gluten feed, the by-product of the wet milling of maize grain [ 34 ] and in breads formulated with amaranth and finger millet [ 35 ].…”

“…The characteristic high volume of wheat-based breads can be attributed to their gluten content, which allows the retention of the gas produced during fermentation and reflects the ability of bread dough to expand [ 39 ]. The replacement of wheat flour with SRB flour causes a gluten-dilution effect and the disruption of the gluten network by the reaction of fiber with gluten proteins [ 35 ], thus reducing the bread’s air-holding capacity and, consequently, the bread volume. Similarly, the height of bread loaves decreased as the SRB amount increased, from 3% in 10SRB bread to 28% in 25SRB formulation, due to the lower gluten content compared with the control, corroborating the results observed for bread volume.…”