Application of supercritical carbon dioxide to enhance the aroma of whole sorghum flour for use in 3D printing of sorghum cookies

Abstract

Sorghum is a promising ingredient for new food products due to its high fiber content, slow digestibility, drought resistance, and gluten-free nature. One of the main challenges in sorghum-based products is the unpleasant aroma compounds found in grain sorghum. Therefore, in this study, sorghum flour was treated via supercritical carbon dioxide (SC-CO2) to remove undesired aroma compounds. The resulting SC-CO2-treated flours were used to generate dough for 3D food printing. At the optimized conditions, sorghum cookies were 3D-printed using 60 % water and a nozzle diameter of 1.5 mm. All dough samples produced with untreated and SC-CO2-treated sorghum flours exhibited shear-thinning behavior. Changing the treatment pressure (8–15 MPa) or temperature (40–60 °C) did not significantly affect the viscosity of the dough samples. Moreover, the sorghum cookie doughs had higher G′ and G″ values after the SC-CO2 treatments (G′ >G″). Doughs generated from flours treated at 15 MPa − 40 °C and 8 MPa − 60 °C showed lower adhesiveness compared to the ones produced from untreated flour, whereas 15 MPa − 60 °C treatment did not affect the adhesiveness. After baking, the 3D-printed cookies from SC-CO2-treated flour exhibited significantly lower redness (a*), but the hardness of the cookies was not affected by SC-CO2 treatment. Overall, the SC-CO2 treatment of sorghum flour did not negatively affect the quality parameters of the 3D-printed cookies while enhancing the aroma of the flour.