Physicochemical characteristics of dough and white bread added with arrowroot juice

Author: Sung-Hee Choi ¹, Young-Su Kim ² and Jong-Bang Eun ^{3 *}

Received 18 June 2008, accepted 5 April 2009.

Abstract

The applications of arrowroot in functional foods have been limited largely to noodles and rice cakes, and there is little or no currently available data regarding the physical characteristics of arrowroot juice as an additive to white bread. The physicochemical characteristics of dough and bread added with different quantities of arrowroot juice (0, 15, 25 and 35%) were investigated. The pH values of the dough to which arrowroot juice had been added during the first and second fermentations showed that the addition of arrowroot juice affected an increase in pH values. Our results also revealed a discontinuous weakening of the starch-protein matrix structures of the dough and bread crumbs, attendant to increasing quantities of added arrowroot juice. The scanning electron micrographs obtained from the second fermented dough and the bread crumbs (baked for 30 minutes) evidenced a significant reduction in gas bubble sizes, a greater quantity of collapsed gas bubbles and a greater quantity of thickened cell walls, in comparison to the other samples evaluated in the study. In conclusion, the volume of experimental baked loaves of bread decreased as the result of the addition of arrowroot juice, which contributed to a general decline in the quality characteristics of the white breads, via a reduction of CO₂ in the fermented dough, a thickening of gas bubble walls, and a weakening of gas bubble walls within the bread crumbs after baking. The quality characteristics of the white breads to which 25% arrowroot juice had been added were determined to be optimal among the tested variants.

Key words: Arrowroot juice, white bread, scanning electron microscopy, quality characteristics.