Effect of Sodium Chloride Concentrations on Processing Characteristics and Quality of Mianpi Made Using Different...

Sodium chloride (NaCl) was essential for making mianpi, a traditional Chinese wheat starch gel food. The production process included wheat flour/starch slurry preparation, steaming, cooling, and cutting. This study investigated how NaCl affected both the slurry's properties and the quality of mianpi using three formulations: wheat flour (F100), a 50:50 (w/w) wheat flour-starch mix (F50), and wheat starch (F0). Our findings demonstrated that NaCl significantly altered the slurry rheology, pasting behavior, texture, and starch ordered structures. It notably reduced the slurry apparent viscosity, while it showed a divergent effect on its pasting properties. Regarding product quality, NaCl induced a measurable alteration in L*, a*, and b* values of mianpi, though visually imperceptible. F100 mianpi maintained texture except for when adding 2% NaCl, which reduced hardness. NaCl increased tensile strength (excluding F0). However, it caused irregular texture changes in F50 and F0 mianpi. Furthermore, NaCl modulated viscoelastic properties of mianpi products, as evidenced by reductions in storage and loss modulus. FT-IR showed NaCl disrupted starch short-range order in F100/F0 but improved it in F50, though Raman spectroscopy (480 cm^-1) did not detect this shift. Gluten protein secondary structure remained unaffected across all formulations. These results guide NaCl-starch-flour formulations in starch-gel-based foods.