Enhancing Muffins: Elevating Physicochemical and Nutritional Qualities through Malted Barley Flour Incorporation

Barley is mostly utilized for feeding and beer production, with limited use in cereal-based products. Barley is gaining popularity among agriculture and food scientists because of its high dietary fiber (such as β-glucan), vitamin, and mineral content. The current study aimed to include malted barley flour (MBF) as a partial substitute for wheat flour (WF) to enhance the sensory, physicochemical, and nutritional aspects of muffins. The recipe was formulated through Design Expert 13 software for mixed design as partially substituting wheat flour with malted barley flour within the range 0 to 50 parts and coded samples A, B, C, D, E, F, and G accordingly, and we performed necessary analyses (chemical, sensory assessments, antioxidant activity, and absorption capacity). From the sensory analysis, the findings showed that sample C (83.33%WF: 16.67%MBF) was superior among all the samples. Furthermore, water absorption capacity, oil absorption capacity, and foaming capacity were determined to be higher (2.24, 2.45, and 0.86 g/g) in sample C as compared to sample A. On the contrary, control sample A exhibited a higher foaming capacity (18.27%) and bulk density (0.74 g/cm3). Overall, nutritional composition revealed that the best-formulated muffin had a significantly higher (p<0.05) amount of crude protein (18.1%), crude fiber (2.13%), total ash (1.95%), carbohydrate (51.02%), antioxidant activity (43.4%), calcium (70 mg/100g), and iron (9.2 mg/100g), except for moisture (27.6%) and crude fat (26.5%). Hence, the finding provides actionable recommendations for entrepreneurs to improve the nutritional and sensory attributes of regular muffins by applying MBF up to 16.67 parts.