Recently, the Food nutrition and Functional Foods Innovation Team, Institute of Food Science and Technology (IFST), Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS), developed new quality control technology for highland barley bread. The research findings were published in the International Journal of Biological Macromolecules (IF: 8.025), a JCR Q1 journal in the discipline of food science.

The highland barley bread made from whole highland barley flour is unable to form a strong gel network structure, which always results in a small specific volume, high hardness and poor eating quality of bread. To improve the gel structure of highland barley dough and the quality of highland barley bread, we investigated the influences of egg white (EW), egg yolk (EY) and whole egg (WE) on the structure of highland barley dough and the quality of highland barley bread in this study. The results showed that egg powder strengthened the gel structure of highland barley dough and improved the texture and flavor of highland barley bread. EW enhanced the proportion of β-sheet in EW highland barley dough, and the random coil was transformed into β-sheet and α-helix in EY and WE highland barley dough, which contributed to the improvement of the stability of protein network structure in highland barley dough. The total sulfhydryl groups of highland barley dough with EY and WE increased, which promoted the conversion of disulfide bonds from free sulfhydryl groups. Interestingly, highland barley bread with WY had a larger specific volume and excellent texture characteristics, and EY endowed highland barley bread with richer flavor substances. The sensory evaluation results showed that highland barley bread containing EY received higher score than other breads in terms of appearance, color, porosity, flavor and acceptance by consumers.

Professor Fengzhong Wang and Professor Litao Tong are the co-corresponding author, the first author is Yue He, a postgraduate student of IFST. This study was supported financially by Special National Key Research and Development Plan (2021YFD1600101), the project of Science and Technology Department of Qinghai Province (2021-NK-A3) and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region "Tianshan Talent" Training Plan Project (2022TSYCCX0063).

Link to the paper：

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2023.124376