Investigation on rice flour and jaggery paste as food material for extrusion‐based 3D printing

Abstract

A novel 3D printable food construct, comprising of rice flour (RF), jaggery (J), and water (W) are being investigated for an extrusion-based 3D food printer. The effect of the constituents on the rheological properties, textural properties, and printability of 20 different combinations were investigated and two combinations of R3 and R5 were found to be best printable based on their shape retention after printing. To determine the best combination between R3 and R5 steaming was done as post-processing and R5 was found to have better dimensional accuracy than R3. Also, R5 required lesser extrusion force compared to R3. The rheological and textural parameters of the best combination R5 (RF: 85.95 g, J: 33.04 g, W: 114.93 g) are hardness: 254.41 g, adhesiveness: −527.05 g-sec, firmness: 3,835.66 g, G′: 9,066.67 Pa, G″: 1,708.33 Pa, phase angle: 10.68°, G*: 9,226.2 Pa, flow stress (FS): 138.07 Pa, yield stress: 8.06 Pa. Mathematical model for G′, G″, and FS with R2 .91, .83, and .99, respectively, are proposed. Practical applications The developed construct can be used as a healthy 3D printing construct by new startups as 3D printing is gaining importance day by day. The complete rheological and texture properties of the best printable construct are studied in detail which helps in characterizing the sample and mathematical models are proposed for G′, G″, and flow stress. This work proposes the use of jaggery as a healthy alternative to sugar as many commercial 3D printed objects are based on sugar. Since most of the printing has been reported with some sort of additives, this work proves the possibility of using traditional food materials without additives for printing.