Technological and nutritional properties of backery-products enriched with immature wheat grain

The basic composition and functional properties of mature cereal grains have been extensively studied. The search for potential and economic opportunities for novel uses of cereal grains has focused research on immature grains. Bread and cookie samples were obtained from wheat flour mixed with immature wheat grain (IWG) meal employing conventional bread and cookie-making technological processes. IWG integration seems to affect bread characteristics and in particular specific volume, moisture and consistency. In cookies the presence of immature wheat meals do not influence significantly either the colour or the other physical indices. The integration with IWG meal promotes interesting nutritional characteristics in enriched products, not only things such as a high level of dietary fibre and FOS but also differences in starch digestibility, which is lower in IWG enriched products thus suggesting their use as a functional food in diets.