Wheat bran enrichment for flour products: Challenges and solutions

Abstract

Wheat bran (WB) is a major by‐product of wheat processing and is widely used as livestock feed and brewing material. Its development and application have attracted a great deal of interest in both scientific and industrial domains due to the increasing demand for more healthy foods. Hence, using WB‐added flours is seen as an effective means of improving the nutritional quality of flour products. However, the high insoluble dietary fiber content of WB may affect the quality of flour products during processing, mainly in terms of darker color, coarse texture (granular), and reduced volume, leading to limitations in its application. Moreover, some poor‐quality or diseased WB is prone to carrying fungal toxins, pesticides, and heavy metals. This review will summarize the challenges of WB for nutritional fortification in flour products and analyze the reasons for the issues encountered. Finally, it proposed practical solutions to the problems of dark color, coarse texture, small volume, and poor quality of WB, besides foreseeing the upcoming obstacles in WB use. Novelty impact statement This review focuses on the challenges of nutritional fortification of wheat bran in flour products and analyzes the reasons for the problems encountered. An overview of current modification methods is presented mainly from physical, chemical and biological perspectives to solve the problems of dark color, coarse texture, small volume, and poor quality of wheat bran.

Three thermal treated methods improve physicochemical and functional properties of wheat bran‐germ and the bran‐germ containing products

“…The free, bound, and total flavonoid contents of BWBGN, WWBGN, and EWBGN were significantly decreased compared to that of UWBGN ( P < 0.05). Yan et al 45 . indicated that double‐pass extrusion was more effective in releasing ferulic acid and improved the bio‐accessibility of bioactive compounds.…”

“…The free, bound, and total flavonoid contents of BWBGN, WWBGN, and EWBGN were significantly decreased compared to that of UWBGN (P < 0.05). Yan et al 45 indicated that double-pass extrusion was more effective in releasing ferulic acid and improved the bio-accessibility of bioactive compounds. A possible explanation for this phenomenon was that flavonoids are more sensitive to heating than phenolic and decreased during cooking.…”

Functional and Nutritional Characteristics of Natural or Modified Wheat Bran Non-Starch Polysaccharides: A Literature Review

“…Alkali treatment increases SDF and improves bile acid-binding capacity, WHC, α-amylase activity, GAC, WSC, and thermal stability. A coupled acid-alkaline treatment had the most significant results on improving fibre solubility [24,282,283].…”

Effect of addition of wheat bran hydrolysate on bread properties

“…There have been different attempts to reduce or eliminate these negative effects including reducing the bran size (Cai et al., 2014; Cingöz et al., 2023; Kaprelyants et al., 2013; Noort et al., 2010), using enzymes (Yan et al., 2022), addition of vital gluten (Messia et al., 2016; Ortolan & Steel, 2017), fermentation (Hemdane et al., 2016), extrusion (Gomez et al., 2011), and hydrothermal treatment of wheat bran (Cingöz et al., 2023; Kabel et al., 2007). Some enzymes including α‐amylases (Liu et al., 2017), xylanase (Yan et al., 2022), cellulase (Park et al., 2018), lipase (Melis et al., 2019), dextransucrase (Kajala et al., 2015), protease (Fuentes et al., 2016), oxidative enzymes (Fuentes et al., 2016) affect dough stability and bread shelf life positively and reduce the rate of staling and thus prolong bread freshness. Fermentation of bran changes the cell wall structure by converting arabinoxylans into a soluble form and thus overcomes its negative effects on dough and bread.…”