Influence of oat flour on pasting properties of flour blends, cooking quality and sensory attributes of vermicelli

Abstract

Supplementation of oat flour into vermicelli may improve the nutritional quality, but textural and sensory attributes should not be adversely affected. The present study was carried out with the aim to evaluate the influence of oat flour substitution on functional and pasting properties of flour formulations, and the sensory and cooking quality of wheat-semolina based vermicelli. Different ratios viz. 50:50, 33:66, 25:75, 66:33, 40:60, 75:25 and 60:40 of durum wheat and oat flour were tried, and corn flour ~15 % was added to the wheat semolina and oat flour mix, and afterwards the extruded wet vermicelli was fluidized bed dried at 90°C. Statistically significant variations were observed for the pasting properties of different flour blends. Increasing the oat flour concentration led to a significant decrease in cooking quality in terms of swelling index, water holding capacity and cooking losses. The overall acceptability of formulation having 50% oat, 50% wheat semolina and 15% corn flour was similar to the control vermicelli prepared from wheat semolina. Thus, up to 50% replacement of wheat semolina by oat flour produced vermicelli with acceptable sensory and cooking quality, which could be recommended for the preparation of β-glucan enriched vermicelli without compromising its quality attributes.