ACTIVITY 5

The aim of this task is to develop and evaluate food prototypes (bread, crackers and cookies) – novel food products (antioxidant-enriched food) that satisfy the desires of consumers in terms of health benefits and sensorial acceptance.

In this project, the strategy proposed consists of the replacement of sodium chloride in bread and salted crackers by the addition of dried powder halophyte plants and/or the addition of white crowberry for acceptable sensory quality.

The emphasis of this activity is to understand the effect of sodium chloride replacement by dried halophytes powder on the structure, namely on the development of the gluten matrix, dough properties and overall quality of bread and crackers.

The impact of halophytes and crowberries incorporation on the ageing kinetics of the products will also be evaluated, through the assessment of the texture properties. This task will be performed in Instituto Superior de Agronomia (ISA).

The choice of the food vehicle (cookies) for incorporation of plants extracts is intended to solve the challenging problem that has been raised by our Food Industry Partner (Dan Cake company).

This task will be performed as follows: (i) batches of cookies following a conventional recipe (without artificial additives) will be enriched by adding the most promising extracts or nano encapsulated extracts previously analysed; (ii) samples of each batch of cookies will be stored at ambient temperature, and analyzed periodically for physic, nutritional, sensorial properties and microbial activity. These parameters will be chosen as a guide to test the changes occurring during storage. This task will be performed in ESAC/IPC.