Airy, delicious pastries with food foam made from peas

04-Dec-2024

In the Fraunhofer IVV laboratory, researchers have succeeded in producing the protein foam from legumes such as peas or lentils.

Food foam made from hen's egg white makes pastries and cakes light and airy. Fraunhofer researchers are working on a plant-based alternative made from pulses in the "LeguFoam" project.

"More and more people are eating health-consciously and at the same time want ethically safe, vegan products. We are addressing this need with the LeguFoam project," explains Dr. Maike Föste, senior scientist in the Food Process Development department at the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging IVV in Freising near Munich. The initiative is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Climate Protection (BMWK).

She and her team use pea flour to produce the food foam. "When processed correctly, these have a very neutral taste and are therefore very suitable," says Föste.

The protein concentrate is obtained from a flour-water suspension. By adding lye, the pH value increases and proteins are dissolved. After subsequent centrifugation, the proteins can be further concentrated using membrane separation processes. The next step is the analysis and characterization of the protein concentrate. The researchers are particularly interested in the protein's ability to form foam and the long-term stability of the foam.

Proteins stabilize gas bubbles

Foam is formed when air bubbles are introduced into a liquid mixture by beating. Proteins form a film around the interfaces of the gas bubbles and thus stabilize them. The better the functional groups of the proteins dock to the bubbles, the more foamy mass can be produced and the more stable it is in the long term. To improve the ability of the pea protein concentrate to form foam, the research team at the Fraunhofer IVV uses high pressure homogenization. This allows the protein structure to be specifically functionalized and the ability to form foam to be controlled. When characterizing and functionalizing the protein concentrates, the researchers benefited from their many years of experience in working with legumes and plant proteins.

The researchers are also testing how long the foamy mass retains its consistency. After the protein concentrate has been whipped up, the resulting foam remains in a container of a defined size for a set period of time. The researchers then check how much foam remains.

"In the meantime, our process technology with the legumes comes quite close to the quality of animal protein foam," says Föste happily. In the next step, the team is working on improving the long-term stability even further.

In an initial sensory evaluation, the Fraunhofer researchers also tested the taste qualities of their legume-based baked goods. The result: gourmets and lovers of sweet pastries of confectionery quality will still notice differences. Nevertheless, the plant-based alternative was also convincing in terms of taste.

Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.

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