The market for gluten-free products, which is predominately served by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), showed considerable growth in the last few years. However, currently available products exhibit a number of problems, which are still limiting their consumer acceptance. These include high starch and low fibre contents, reduced shelf-life compared to gluten-containing products, strong off-flavours as well as dense, crumbly and dry texture for bread and untypical colouring, low protein and fibre contents, reduced elasticity and increased cooking losses for pasta. These issues were directly addressed in the EC project 'GlutenFree' (Project No: 262418) in a multilateral co-operation of food producers, ingredient providers and research institutes from Germany, Ireland, Italy and Sweden (Figure 1). The overall objective was to enable SMEs to develop tasty premium gluten-free bakery products and pasta and on improving their taste, smell, appearance, texture and mouthfeel as well as their nutritional value.
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