The Ability of ovine whey powder to improve quality of Sardinian bakery products

Ovine whey is a by-product of the dairy industry, which is widely available in the Mediterranean area; its potential to improve the rheological properties of semolina-based dough, the quality indexes of bread and the shelf life of a typical Sardinian cheese cake has been the subject of investigation. In the first part of this PhD thesis, 2 low grade semolinas (LGS) were used (one obtained from a modern wheat cultivar with strong and tenacious gluten, and the other obtained from an old wheat variety with weak and stick gluten) and mixed with 2 commercial ovine whey powders (OWP) and rheological properties of the dough were studied.In the second part, 2 kinds of bread were made using 2 LGSs and one OWP at 4 different concentrations. The addition of OWP was able to improve the bread making quality of the semolina characterized by weak gluten. This result could be exploited to verify the effect of the addition of OWP to old durum wheat varieties, which are generally characterized by having weak and sticky gluten.In the third part, we studied the combination of modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) and substitution of ricotta cheese with 4 and 8% of OWP to extend the shelf life of cheesecakes, compared with samples packaged in air and without OWP. The combined use of MAP and OWP at the highest concentration increased the mould-free shelf life of the cakes to 60 days without affecting sensory characteristics.