Home-made bread supplemented with debetainized molasses: quality attributes and nutritional content

Molasses is an important by-product of sugar industry that contains many valuable bioactive compounds. One of interesting compounds is betaine, present only in beet molasses. On a large scale, betaine is produced by extraction from molasses in the process of desugarization. After this process, the remaining waste stream is desugared (debetainized) molasses (DBM) which is rich in minerals. This stream is particularly interesting for its high potassium content. Potassium is an important mineral in human nutrition. Although potassium deficiencies are rare among general population, recently, insufficient intakes have been reported and officially announced by the USDA as a public health concern for general public. Similar observations were made in other developed countries. According to some estimation, the average daily potassium intake of people in industrialized countries meets barely half of the recommended daily value whereas sodium intake is three times higher than the potassium intake. The relative deficiency of dietary potassium in the modern diet may play a role in the pathology of some chronic diseases like stroke, osteoporosis, kidney stones and hypertension. This paper deals with the characterization of home-made bread supplemented with debetainized molasses. Addition of DBM significantly increased the potassium and iron content and provided more favourable K to Na ratio, in comparison to the control bread. Contrary to expectations, DBM did not improve the B vitamin content of the bread. The supplemented bread had slightly lower specific volume, well-developed but firmer crumb, excellent taste and dark colour. Since the fraction of exhausted molasses contains sodium, during the preparation of bread, kitchen salt can be completely omitted from the formulation. The results of this paper showed that DBM can be used as a supplement in bakery production but further research is required to find an optimal DBM level in order to maximize the bread potassium content and make it eligible to bear a „Source of potassium“ claim.