New ingredients and alternatives to durum wheat semolina for a high quality dried pasta

The increasing interest of consumers for food with enhanced nutritional characteristics has spurred industry to look for unconventional raw materials for novel food design. Pasta is a staple food consumed all over the world, and therefore represents an ideal matrix for the enrichment with functional ingredients. Despite durum wheat semolina is considered the best raw material for Italian pasta making, due to its physicochemical, rheological and sensory properties, nutritionally enriched pasta is becoming quite popular among specific segments of consumers. Nowadays there is a wide choice of ingredients available to modify and improve the nutritional profile of durum wheat semolina pasta. Among them dietary fibres, legume flours, rice, corn, emmer, cricket flour among others. The novel ingredients and process also allow the production of high quality gluten-free pasta for sensitive and celiac consumers categories. The use of alternative ingredients in pasta formulation results in interesting modifications in quality as well as nutritional and sensory characteristics.