Challenges and Opportunities in Wheat Flour, Pasta, Bread, and Bakery Product Production Chains: A Systematic Review of Innovations and Improvement Strategies to Increase Sustainability, Productivity, and Product Quality

Alessio Cappelli,Enrico Cini

doi:10.3390/su13052608

Abstract

Pasta, bread, and bakery products are considered worldwide as essential foods for human nutrition. In particular, ancient wheats and whole wheat flours, despite being able to provide health benefits via bioactive compounds, present significant technological problems related to poorer dough rheological properties and final product characteristics. Moreover, both the food industry and consumers are increasingly sensitive to environmental impacts, highlighting the urgent need for sustainable innovations and improvement strategies, from cradle to grave, for the entire production chains, thus motivating this review. The aim of this review is to provide technological innovations and improvement strategies to increase the sustainability, productivity, and quality of flours, pasta, bread, and bakery products. This review is focused on the main operations of the production chains (i.e., wheat cultivation, wheat milling, dough processing, and, finally, the manufacturing of pasta, bread, and bakery products). To achieve this goal, the use of life-cycle assessment (LCA) analysis proved to be an effective tool that can be used, from early stages, for the development of eco-friendly improvement strategies. The correct management of the wheat cultivation stage was found to be essential since it represents the most impacting phase for the environment. Successively, particular attention needs to be paid to the milling process, the kneading phase, to breadmaking, and, finally, to the manufacturing of pasta. In this review, several specifically developed solutions for these essential phases were suggested. In conclusion, despite further investigations being necessary, this review provided several innovations and improvement strategies, using an approach “from cradle to grave”, able to increase the sustainability, productivity, and final quality of flour, semolina, pasta, bread, and bakery products.

Highlights

Wheat flour, pasta, bread, and bakery products are considered worldwide as essential for human nutrition since they are an important source of macronutrients, micronutrients, dietary fiber, and antioxidants [1,2]
This review is focused on the main operations of the production chains
Particular attention needs to be paid to the milling process, the kneading phase, to breadmaking, and, to the manufacturing of pasta

Summary

Introduction

Pasta, bread, and bakery products are considered worldwide as essential for human nutrition since they are an important source of macronutrients (mainly carbohydrates and protein), micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), dietary fiber, and antioxidants [1,2]. A significant increase has been observed in consumer interest for bakery products able to provide health benefits via bioactive compounds [3,4] This trend has led to the rediscovery of ancient wheats and to an increase in the use of whole wheat flours in the food industry [4,5,6]. With respect to ancient wheats, the revival of cultivation and use of several ancient local varieties has increased the sustainability of wheat cultivation and contributed to biodiversity protection [3,7,8] It has permitted the development of a local micro-economy (continuously growing) which allows. Despite a more suitable nutritional profile [3], the ancient wheats are characterized by worse technological characteristics (e.g., poorer rheological properties of doughs and lower bread volume), compared to modern wheat cultivars

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Results

Conclusion