Nutritional attributes, shelf life and sensory evaluation of soft bread with sun-dried tomato, quinoa and dried basil

Abstract

Chronic diseases prevention is one of the main concerns during the last decades. A healthy dietary lifestyle is considered to be one of the main prevention strategies. Recently, due to the busy life and due to the new lifestyle, people are directly tended to consume convenient foods which are usually not healthy. In this project, we tried to formulate a product which can be considered at the same time beneficial, convenient, and acceptable by the majority of the population. Bread is a food commonly and regularly consumed, therefore it can be used as a vehicle to increase the consumption of beneficial health products. The bread sample formulated contains sun-dried tomatoes, quinoa and dried basil. Each of these ingredients contribute to a beneficial health effect and therefore, their addition to bread will lead to a more functional food product. The testing analysis performed showed that the formulated soft-bread bread, compared to the usual plain soft-bread, contained 14.33mg/kg more lycopene, 7% more proteins and around 3% more fibers. Moreover, the shelf-life of the formulated bread did not differ from the shelf-life of the plain bread. In addition to that, the hedonic test showed that the formulated bread was well accepted by the majority of the participants.