2001 AACC Annual Meeting Charlotte, North Carolina October 14-18, 2001 Charlotte Convention Center

Several beneficial health effects have been attributed to consuming food products containing barley. One way to improve human nutrition is to improve the nutritional value of puffed snack foods that are consumed by a large segment of the population. The objective of the present study was to develop a puffed snack with enhanced nutritional properties using barley flour. Since barley flour has poor puffing properties, wheat or potato starches were blended with the barley flour and three moisture levels were tested to determine effects on puffed product density. Blends were extruded through a pasta extruder. Resulting pasta was chopped to form kernels similar to rice kernels in size and appearance and puffed using a rice cake machine. The starch content in the blends ranged from 0% to 50%. Moisture content in the kernels was tested at 16%, 18% and 20%. Cakes puffed from kernels containing 20% moisture had lower density (0.27 g/cm(^3)) than cakes made of kernels containing 16% (0.56 g/cm(^3)) or 18% moisture. Incorporation of wheat and potato starches decreased the specific density of puffed cakes. The lowest specific density (0.18g/cm(^3)) was recorded in cakes made from kernels containing 50% potato starch and 20% moisture. Cakes made with wheat starch had a similar or slightly lower specific density than cakes made with potato starch at a given moisture level. The moisture and the starch contents also affected structure and textural strength of the puffed cakes.