Exploring alternative cereal flours and their potential for sourdough fermentation: Insights from Tritordeum and...

Cereal-based foods play an important role in the human diet and represent a source of biological and cultural diversity worldwide, especially when they are fermented. Increasing consumer demand for a nutritional, sustainable and healthy diet has motivated the leavened bakery industries to also direct their attention to new alternative cereal flours to produce products with a better nutritional value, while also ensuring good flavor. In this chapter, we explore the potential of Tritordeum, a novel cereal developed from the hybridization of wheat and barley, along with pseudocereals (quinoa, buckwheat and amaranth), which warrant inclusion in diet as main or fortified ingredients. These wheat alternative cereals are not only valuable for their distinct nutritional profiles, including higher protein, dietary fiber, and micronutrient content, but also have potential for the development of new flavor rich, healthy leavened baked goods. Consequently, this chapter delves into the nutritional, functional and technological features of Tritordeum and selected pseudocereals considering their strengths and limitations as ingredients to produce leavened baked goods. Furthermore, we review the effect of sourdough fermentation as an emerging, versatile and sustainable process to exploit the nutritional, functional and technological features of alternative cereal flours, and how it improves the sensory and bioavailability of nutrients while mitigating the common challenges, such as antinutritional factors and poor rheological properties.