Improvement of cooking quality of maize pasta products by heat treatment

A new process has been developed to manufacture good pasta products from a blend of durum wheat semolina and maize flour (ratio 33: 66). It consists of submitting, to a high temperature (90 to 120°C) for 90 to 180 min, pasta previously processed and dried under the usual industrial conditions. Colour characteristics (yellowness, brownness and red index) are not affected when the treatment is kept below 100°C; at a higher temperature the red index increases sharply. There is a distinct improvement in cooking quality (cooking losses, surface condition) and this is inversely related to the water content of the pasta before treatment. The viscoelasticity of cooked pasta is dramatically modified when the temperature of treatment is 120°C.