Green pea waste flour as a wheat flour partial replacer in pound cake: Batter rheology behavior and cake quality properties.

Background: The total annual amounts of food loss and waste represent approximately 30% of all food supplied for human consumption. Reducing this loss and waste is a challenge and valorizing this reduction requires more effort. The present study aimed to investigate the feasibility of replacing wheat flour (WF) with different levels of green pea waste flour (GPWF) to produce pound cake.

Methods: To prepare GPWF, green pea waste was dried at 65°C; the dried samples were pulverized and sieved through 50 mesh sieves. Six cake samples were prepared, wherein wheat flour was replaced with GPWF at the following levels: 0 (control), 10, 20, 30, 40 and 50%. Sensory evaluation was performed to determine the acceptability of various cake samples. Based on the results of the sensory evaluation, the acceptable replacement levels were determined and the effects of the GPWF-WF replacement level (10-30%) on the rheological behavior of cake batters and the quality characteristics of baked cakes were evaluated.

Results: Cake samples incorporating GPWF at levels higher than 30% significantly (p < 0.05) exhibited the lowest scores for all organoleptic characteristics compared to other samples. The storage modulus (G') and loss modulus (G″) of all cake batters involving GPWF were higher than those of the control cake batter and they were found to be less dependent on frequency. Increasing the GPWF-WF replacement level significantly (p < 0.05) decreased cake volume, springiness, and cohesiveness; however, cake density and hardness significantly (p < 0.05) increased. The lightness (L*) and yellowness (b*) of the cake crust and crumb significantly decreased with an increase in the replacement ratio, while the highest impacts on the crumb color in terms of greenness (a*) were noted when GPWF were used at all the studied replacement levels.

Conclusions: High quality cakes could be obtained at GPWF-WF replacement ratios up to 20%, as they had sensorial, textural and appearance characteristics close to that of the control cake samples.