Study of drying process on starch structural properties and their effect on semolina pasta sensory quality

The influence of drying temperature on the starch crystallites and its impact on durum wheat pasta sensory properties is addressed in this work. In particular, spaghetti were produced by means of a pilot plant using 5 different drying temperature profiles. The sensory properties, as well as the cooking quality of pasta were assessed. X-ray powder diffraction was used for investigating changes in the crystallinity content of the samples. Starch crystallinity, size and density of the starch crystallites were determined from the analysis of the diffraction profiles. As expected, spaghetti sensory properties improved as the drying temperatures increased. In particular, attributes as resistance to break for uncooked samples and firmness, elasticity, bulkiness and stickiness for cooked samples, all benefit from drying temperature increase. The spaghetti cooking quality was also positively affected by the drying temperature increase. Diffraction analysis suggested that the improvement of sensory properties and cooking quality of pasta were directly related to the increase in density of both physical crosslink of starch granules and chemical crosslink of protein matrix.