Insight into quality features of bread from optimized wheat-chickpea dough: from macroscopic to molecular properties

Chickpea flour represents a valuable raw material to enrich wheat flour bread; however, its incorporation negatively affects breadmaking performance. The kneading conditions of wheat flour bread enriched with chickpea flour were optimized to obtain acceptable bread specific volume according to the literature (3.1 cm³ g⁻¹). Two optimized kneading conditions were selected: i) Minimizing kneading time (A) and, ii) Minimizing water amount (B). Then, the effect of (i) Chickpea flour incorporation (0, 10, 20, 30 % w/w flour), and (ii) Kneading conditions (A, B) was investigated on bread macroscopic and molecular properties. Multivariate analyses allowed to identify the response variables mostly affected by independent variables, and ANOVA was performed on these parameters.

All chickpea enriched samples showed acceptable bread specific volume, and the same crumb porosity as the wheat flour bread. Crumb texture similar to the control sample was obtained up to 20 % chickpea flour substitution, and with kneading condition A. ¹H NMR results revealed significant differences as a function of chickpea flour substitution level, and kneading condition A had molecular profile more similar to the control sample.

The kneading conditions showed a critical role in optimizing the quality of composite bread, and the minimization of kneading time (A) produced the best results. The optimization of processing parameters should be further investigated to increase the use of alternative flours and improve the process control.