The effect of extrusion condition and blend proportion on the physicochemical and sensory attributes of teff-soybean composite flour gluten free extrudates

Abstract

The effects of soybean-to-teff ratio (SB), feed moisture content (FM) and barrel temperature (BT) on physico-chemical properties and sensory attributes of extruded product from teff-soybean flour blend was studied. Increase in BT resulted in increase in expansion ratio(ER), water absorption index (WAI), and water solubility index (WSI) whereas the bulk density (BD) and hardness decreased with increase in BT. Increase in the proportion of SB resulted in increased BD, hardness, and reduced water solubility index (WSI) and sensory scores. Three principal components explained 89.1% of the variations where the first (PC1), the second (PC2) and the third (PC3) principal components explained 62.4, 20.2 and 6.5% of the variations respectively. BD, WAI and Hardness are strongly and positively associated with each other whereas they are negatively associated with WSI, crispiness, Specific length (Lsp) and ER. Graphical optimization gave best results for BT between 128 to 137°C and SB proportion between 2-7.3% where the FM is fixed at 10%. Besides, BT of 135°C to137°C, FM of 10-12% when the SB proportion is fixed at 7.5% gave optimal product quality. The numerical optimization resulted in optimal extrusion conditions for optimal product quality were BT of 135°C, FM of 10% and SB proportion of 5% with a desirability value of 0.875. The results revealed that SB can be incorporated up to 7.5% to obtain an acceptable product. Therefore it is possible to produce gluten-free extruded snack by blending teff and soybean flour.