Microencapsulated olive leaf extract enhances physicochemical stability of biscuits

•500 µg/g Olive Leaf Extracts (OLE) in biscuits formula are accepted by consumers.•Biscuit's storage under UV light well evidenced the differences among the samples.•Biscuits enriched with microencapsulated OLE showed the best oxidative stability.•Biscuits enriched with microencapsulated OLE resulted harder during storage. Free and microencapsulated olive leaves extracts (OLE) have been proposed as natural antioxidant to prolong the stability of biscuits, under two accelerated storage conditions, with and without UV light. The equivalent of 500 µg gallic acid/ g of dough has been selected as the sensory acceptable OLE concentration. Higher total phenol content and antioxidant activity were observed in biscuits enriched with both free (B-OLE) and microencapsulated (B-MCR) OLE, in comparison to the controls (B-C), being B-MCR less affected than B-OLE during storage. Higher oxidative stability was detected for B-MCR than B-OLE and B-C, when measured by both peroxide value and Oxitest. A general hardness decrease was observed for all the formulations during storage, being however B-MCR always harder than B-OLE and B-C, probably because of the interactions of the microsphere polymers (alginate and pectin) with water. Darker colours were measured for the enriched biscuits in comparison to the control ones, being all slightly affected during storage by water migration and lipid oxidation phenomena. [Display omitted]