Gluten-free fresh pasta: Influence of pregelatinized starch, inulin, and probiotic usage on extrusion and cooking properties

This study aims to define the best fresh gluten-free pasta (GFP) formulation, based on corn starch partially replaced (10, 20, and 30%) with pregelatinized starch (PGS), by hybrid multi-criteria decision making including AHP and TOPSIS, respectively, to enrich with inulin with two different degrees of polymerization (DP≥10 and DP≥23) and concentrations (4 and 8%), and then Bacillus coagulans GBI-30, 6086 as a probiotic source, respectively, and evaluate the extrusion attributes, cooking properties with different time intervals (0, 1, 5, 10, and 15 min), sensory characterization, and the cell viability of probiotics with/without inulin as a prebiotic source. The criteria weights of extrusion yield, cooking loss, yellowness index, hardness, and taste were 0.34, 0.22, 0.05, 0.11, and 0.29, respectively, as defined by the AHP method. According to TOPSIS results, the control sample based on durum wheat semolina was the first-ranked pasta, followed by 20% PGS-incorporated GFP, which was the best alternative to the control group. In general, the moisture, water absorption capacity, swelling index, cooking loss, volume increase, turbidity, and amylose leaching were increased, whereas color (L*, a*, b*, yellowness index, and color score) and texture profile attributes were decreased as the cooking time prolonged in all fresh GFP with/without inulin or probiotic source. The probiotic inclusion into fresh GFP with/without inulin generally negatively influenced the end-product quality. However, the viability of probiotics was above approximately 85% and 67% in inulin-fortified GFP with different DP and concentrations at 5 min and 10 min of cooking, respectively. Therefore, except for probiotic-enriched fresh GFP without inulin cooked for 10 min, the results were still above the acceptable threshold to show a potential positive impact on host health, which corresponds to at least 106 CFU/g of live strains.