PRECONDITIONING STARCH IN OLIGOSACCHARIDES TO MODIFY STARCH FUNCTIONALITY

Baked goods are one of the primary sources of added sugar in the American diet. Excessive consumption of added sugar can lead to diseases such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes. As information pertaining to the link between health and diet becomes more available to consumers, the demand for products with lower calories, fat, and sugar continues to rise. The obstacle in formulating baked goods with alternative sweeteners is that these sweeteners have different effects on the physicochemical properties of the starch in the products than that of sucrose, leading to differences in texture, color (browning), texture, and flavor between the sucrose-containing products consumers are accustomed to and the new reduced sugar products. Previous studies done by the Mauer lab have found that interactions between the sweeteners that enter the amorphous region of the starch granule alter physicochemical properties of the starch, including the gelatinization temperature (T_gel) and pasting properties of the starch. The purpose of this project was to investigate how the presence of oligosaccharides (OS) used as sucrose replacers in starch-containing products alters the functionality of the starch through modification of its thermal and physicochemical properties. Different botanical sources of starch were preconditioned in solutions containing different concentrations of select OS, varying temperature during preconditioning. The preconditioned starches were then analyzed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), rapid visco analysis (RVA), and x-ray diffraction (XRD). Results demonstrated that several OS are less effective plasticizers of starch (all botanical sources) than sucrose, meaning T_gel is higher in the presence of these OS and less pasting occurs. This is advantageous for formulating low moisture baked goods that rely on inhibition of starch gelatinization for desirable product quality.