Consumption of foods with fiber is increasingly present in the eating habits of consumers which take care about aspects of foods effect in health. This project aimed to produce and evaluate the effect of partial replacement of wheat flour by passion fruit peel flour (PFF) in French bread (FB). For this, FB with partial substitutions (0%, 10%, 20% and 30%) were produced, and characterized in relation to the moisture content (oven at 105ºC/24h), specific volume (VolScan Profiler), and hardness (texturometer TA-XT2i).
It was observed that the increase in PFF concentration (0% to 30%) caused a significant increase in the moisture content of the crust (23.20% to 45.95%) and crumb (44.19% to 57.18%). Comparing the mean values for control sample and bread with 30% PFF, a significant reduction in the specific volume values, from 4.06 to 1.29 ml/g, and an increase of hardness, from 239 to 1970g, was observed.
The higher water retention capacity may be linked to the high fiber concentration in the samples produced with PFF. Likewise, results of the specific volume and hardness could be attributed to the high fiber concentration in the PFF samples, which can be caused by water competition with gluten, decreasing of gluten amount, and consequently difficulty in formation of a cohesive gluten network, elastic and capable to expand and deforming during expansion (fermentation or baking).
Therefore, it was possible to conclude that the production of FB using PFF was possible, and that the partial substitution of wheat flour at levels above of 10% PFF not produced breads with similar responses to the control. Thus, in order to better understand the mechanisms involved in the structure creation during baking, the evaluation of product alveolar structure setting during baking could represent in important aspect to be evaluated.