High in fibre, low in calories and deliciously moist – traditional baked goods rarely tick all these boxes. In contrast, products that contain resistant wheat starches offer optimized nutritional values. Furthermore, ingredients specialist Loryma also offers practical concepts that succeed in combining all attributes mentioned.

Growing awareness of the importance of health and wellbeing is influencing dietary preferences and habits like never before. Instead of three traditional main meals, more and more people are opting for several mini-meals, as snacking is far more compatible with their hectic everyday lives. In principle, baked goods such as bread rolls or muffins are ideal as a quick bite between meals, as they are easy to eat on the go. With conventional recipes, however, the list of ingredients tends to expose such products as highly calorific and with little nutritional value. Yet, according to a recent trends survey, the health aspect is an important factor in consumer purchasing decisions.

Ingredients manufacturers like Loryma have therefore responded to these new market demands with a range of functional ingredients that assure optimized nutrition. For Norbert Klein, Head of Product Development, wheat starch is the appropriate inclusion in better-for-you bakery products: “Our resistant wheat starch Lory Starch Elara not only reduces energy density, but also increases the amount of dietary fibre in products, which can have a beneficial effect on digestion and satiety. This makes them superior to traditional baked goods, which often do not keep you full for long. To keep up with current consumer demand, modern baked goods should have health-promoting ingredients that improve well-being.”

The beneficial effects of dietary fibres are widely known and understood. Nevertheless, both women and men in some European countries do not meet the 25 to 30 g daily amount recommended by several nutrition organisations. Resistant starches consist mainly of dietary fibre and are broken down by bacteria in the colon – rather than the small intestine – to form the short-chain fatty acid butyrate. Butyrate serves as an energy substrate for the intestinal cells and contributes to healthy gut mucosa. Furthermore, short-chain fatty acids can have an anti-inflammatory effect. The intake of dietary fibres can also help to achieve a lasting feeling of satiety because they pass through the stomach undigested, thus ensuring a feeling of fullness for longer.

If mini-meals contained as many calories as classic main meals, the recommended daily energy requirement would soon be exceeded. Long term, such a calorie surplus can lead to weight gain and possible obesity, which is associated with health conditions such as type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and cardiovascular diseases. Due to the way they are broken down in the body, dietary fibres contain just 2 kcal/g, as opposed to carbohydrates at 4 kcal/g. Thus, manufacturers can save additional calories by replacing part of the flour in a yeast loaf with resistant starch, for example.

Lory Starch Elara is odourless and tasteless, as well as free-flowing and dispersible. However, resistant starch has virtually no water-binding capacity. This property can be advantageous in shortbread and other, rather dry doughs. Yet, moist doughs can also be made with resistant wheat starch. Norbert Klein explains: “We are continuously working on developing new recipes that improve nutritional values without changing texture. The additional use of pregelatinized wheat starch and extruded flour compensates for the lack of water-binding capacity, so the dough retains its succulence.” Due to its special production process, the cold-soluble extruded wheat flour Lory Flour can bind eight times more water than normal flour.

Functional ingredients such as resistant starch offer the potential to help a product achieve higher fibre content and calorie reduction – two important Nutri-Score criteria. When reformulating existing recipes, the technological characteristics of starch should be taken into account in order to obtain the desired texture. Ideas on how best to improve nutritional profiles are demonstrated by Loryma's concepts with resistant wheat starch, which cover various bakery categories such as toast, muffins and yeast dough.

In order to produce such products with added health value, conventional starch or flour can be proportionally replaced by Lory Starch Elara. In most cases, neither the remaining recipe nor the processing method needs to be changed. As a food ingredient, the modified type 4 starch can be declared as “resistant wheat starch”. The health claim “Replacing digestible starches with resistant starch in a meal contributes to a reduction in the blood glucose rise after that meal” can be used for foods if the proportion of resistant starch in the total starch content is at least 14 %.

Examples of applications are baked goods such as a Nutri-Score A muffin, a high protein/lower carb yeast plait and toast bread. In addition to the increased fibre content through resistant starch, the protein content of these products was also increased with hydrolysed wheat protein. The Loryma development team has also developed concepts for shortbread with protein-rich Skyr filling and high-protein almond biscuits. In shortbread and biscuit doughs, the addition of Lory Starch Elara additionally creates a tender, crumbly texture. The resistant wheat starch can also be extruded as part of a raw material mix. The extrudates not only increase the fibre content of snacks, but also impart an appealing crunch effect.