Optimization Study of the Effect of Rice and Wheat Flour Blend Ratio and Water Content on Bread Texture and Sensory Quality

Bread being a necessary diet for a huge population has a conventional preparatory formulation consisting of wheat flour. As many countries have low wheat production profiles, they import wheat to meet the demand which increases bread preparation cost. Also increase in celiac disease cases makes it less feasible to use gluten rich wheat bread. Considering the above-mentioned facts large number of researches have been done to modulate the formulation of bread preparation by employing blends of different gluten free flours but all of them faced great challenge to achieve comparable conventional bread quality and consumer satisfaction. Flours of sorghum, soy bean, maize and rice have been extensively used in many studies. In the present study rice and wheat flour blends in different ratios were employed with varying water quantity to prepare low gluten bread with high economic feasibility, and optimization was done by Taguchi method to achieve a better formulation capable of meeting the consumer’s expectation. The two factors considered for study were rice to wheat flour ratio and water content added. The responses were crumb firmness, specific volume and sensory analysis. In the optimization results the authors have found ratio of 50:50 for rice to wheat flour with 75% water gave better quality bread with average over all sensory score of 8.48 along with comparable proximate composition and colour, to wheat bread. Hence, this study provides an optimized formulation for preparation of low gluten bread equivalent to wheat bread to combat celiac disease cases and economic load and demands further research at large scale.