Compositional characteristics and sensory quality of biscuits, prawn crackers and fried chips produced from beadfruit

Abstract

Breadfruit was processed into three unconventional food forms, namely into biscuits, prawn crackers and chips. The novel snack food items comprised of four biscuit samples made from wheat flour substituted with 33, 50, 67 and 100% breadfruit flour, one sample of prawn cracker made from breadfruit starch and one sample of fried breadfruit chips. These food items were subjected to proximate analyses and also comparative sensory evaluation alongside their respective commercial equivalents produced from the traditional or conventional foodstuffs. The panel of 24 people evaluated each category of sample for crispness, flavour, colour and overall preference on a 9-point hedonic scale. The proximate analyses showed that all the experimental products could contribute appreciable amounts of principal nutrients to the daily nutrient requirements of would-be consumers. Although there were statistically significant preferences ( P≤0.05) between the test products and their commercial equivalents with respect to some quality attributes, all the experimental products except the biscuit from the 100% breadfruit flour were adjudged to be acceptable in terms of overall quality. The data presented in this study have demonstrated the potential for the industrial exploitation of breadfruit through processing into snack food items suitable for production in fast food service systems.