A Gluten-Free Diet, Not an Appropriate Choice without a Medical Diagnosis
Bakary products and gluten-free
The main problem of gluten-free products is to create a protein network within the flour proteins so that final products met the consumer’s expectations concerning texture and appearance of the fresh bread.
To achieve this purpose they are used:
1. hydrocolloids for building an internal network able to hold the structure of fermented products;
2. different crosslinking enzymes such as glucose oxidase (1), transglutaminase and laccase to create a protein network within the flour proteins.
A – Extract from: “Gluten-Free Products for Celiac Susceptible People. Sweta Rai, Amarjeet Kaur and C. S. Chopra. “
TECHNOLOGICAL APPROACHES FOR MIMING GLUTEN IN GLUTEN-FREE BAKERY PRODUCTS
The formulation of gluten-free bakery products is still a challenge to both for cereal-cum-baking technologists. Replacing gluten functionality has been a challenge for food technologists. The absence of gluten leads to weak cohesion and elastic doughs which results in a crumbling texture, poor color, and low specific volume in bread. Hence, during the last few years, numerous studies have been attempted for improving the physical properties of gluten-free foods, especially baked and fermented foods, by utilizing the interaction of the many ingredients and additives which could mimic the property of gluten (28). Approaches proposed for obtaining gluten-free baked foods include the utilization of different naturally gluten-free flours (rice, maize, sorghum, soy, buckwheat) and starches (maize, potato, cassava, rice), dairy ingredients (caseinate, skim milk powder, dry milk, whey), gums and hydrocolloids (guar and xanthan gums, alginate, carrageenan, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, carboxymethyl cellulose), emulsifiers (DATEM, SSL, lecithins), non-gluten proteins from milk, eggs, legumes and pulses, enzymes (cyclodextrin glycosyl tranferases, transglutaminase, proteases, glucose oxidase, laccase), and non-starch polysaccharides (inulin, galactooligosaccharides) (Table 1). Strengthening additives or processing aids has been fundamental for miming gluten’s iscoelastic properties (93), where mainly hydrocolloids have been used for building an internal network able to hold the structure of fermented products. Simultaneously with the same intention, different crosslinking enzymes such as glucose oxidase, transglutaminase, and laccase have been used to create a protein network within the flour proteins (94). However, the success of gluten-free products relied on the type of effect of the enzymes as gluten-free processing aids, type of flour, enzyme source, and level. Generally, the combinations of ingredients and the optimization of the breadmaking process have resolved the technological problems, yielding gluten-free products that met the consumer’s expectations concerning texture and appearance of the fresh bread (95).