Dietary fibers as gluten replacers

Although the demand for better-tasting, better-textured, and healthier gluten-free (GF) products offers great market opportunities for food manufacturers, the replacement of gluten functionality still presents a major technological challenge. As regards GF bread, several ingredients such as modified starches, gums, and hydrocolloids have been used as alternatives to gluten in order to create a starch-based network, enabling the mass to increase in volume following gas production during proofing. More recently, the incorporation of fiber ingredients in GF formulations has drawn the attention of academia and the food industry. Fiber ingredients not only improve the nutritional quality of the GF products currently available on the market, but some of them also play a technological role in bread-making, improving crumb softness and assuring a long shelf-life. Moreover, some fiber ingredients - such as Psyllium - enhance the physical properties of the dough, due to the film-like structure formed during mixing. This presentation will provide an overview on how to replace gluten functionality using fiber ingredients, highlighting effects on GF dough and bread characteristics.