Effect of co-milled wheat, green gram and barley on the rheological and quality characteristics of cookies.

Studies were carried out on the co-milling of wheat (W), green gram (GG) and barley (BR) grains using a roller milling system. The co-milled straight run flours obtained by varying proportions of wheat, barley and green gram WGGBR-1 (90:5:5), WGGBR-2 (80:10:10) and WGGBR-3 (70:15:15) were used in the cookie baking experiments. As the amount of GG and BR increased in blend, water absorption increased (56.5-58.4%) and dough stability and extensibility values decreased (104-92 mm). Hardness of cookie doughs and spread ratio (7.70-6.00) of cookies decreased and breaking strength values increased from 2900 to 3700 g in cookies made using co-milled blends WGGBR-1, WGGBR-2 and WGGBR-3. The highest breaking strength value (3700 g), large islands, gummy mouth feel and lowest overall quality score of 51.5 were recorded for cookies made with blend WGGBR-3 indicating that the cookies had unacceptable hard texture. The optimum blend for cookies was WGGBR-2 (80:10:10) and the cookies possessed slightly small islands, crisp, light texture and a pleasant taste. These cookies had 12.30 and 8.00% protein and dietary fibre as against the control cookie values of 8 and 4%, respectively. The in vitro protein digestibility of the control cookies was 61% and it was 51% for cookies made with WGGBR-2 blend.