Nutritional enrichment of bakery products by supplementation with nonwheat flours

Bakery products are important ready-to-eat processed foods. The nutritional quality of these products is low because of the inferior nutritional composition of wheat grain per se. This is further accentuated with the use of refined flours in their preparations. Nutritional composition of these products can be improved by using quality wheat for milling, increased extraction rates, air classification of flours to obtain protein-rich nonwheat flours and their products. The flours and protein products of legumes, oilseeds, other cereals, tubers, corn gluten and germ, and rice bran can be used effectively as vegetable protein sources for nutritional enrichment of the bakery products. In this article, recent literature concerning the nutritional composition of major bakery products, sources of vegetable proteins for product enrichment, and modifications in conventional processing methods to maintain the rheological and sensory properties of supplemented bakery products are reviewed critically.