Flour Mixes Offer Consistency and Convenience
Prepared flour mixes are ready-made dry mixes that contain a blend of flours, functional ingredients, starches, flavors, and other ingredients. Moreover, they often contain ingredients in defined qualities that help reduce calories and provide additional nutrients, such as essential fats, vitamins, and carbohydrates.
Prepared mixes are extensively being used in the baking & confectionery industry owing to their multiple benefits, which include minimizing the preparation time, providing flavor and texture, and augmenting the shelf life of final products.
Currently, the bakery sector holds high growth potential and is anticipated to garner a prominent position in the food processing industry. This growth is attributed to the increasing demand for bakery items due to the busy lifestyle of consumers and their inclination toward ready-to-eat convenience foods, containing high nutritional values. There is an increasing demand for low trans-fat and gluten-free bakery products among health-conscious consumers as well. Prepared flour mixes are used for producing high-quality bakery preparations.
Demand for plant-based, gluten-free, keto and clean label products is on the rise. And this means ‘better-for-you’ alternatives to traditional wheat flours are moving from niche, free-from applications to mainstream product launches. Nut flours offer functional versatility and can add an interesting depth of flavor to formulations. They’re also already well-accepted among consumers – the global almond flour market is expected to generate USD2.7bn in revenue by 2029.
Creating a Foundation of Flavor with Nut Flours
ofi is a company that has created a range of nut flours and nut protein powders that offer unique functionalities to help brands create natural, nutritious baked goods.
According to the company, their portfolio offers a nut flour to suit every taste – almond, cashew, walnut, hazelnut, macadamia and pistachio. Nut flour can add a ‘health halo’ to products without compromising on flavor, texture or mouthfeel, providing a source of mono-unsaturated fatty acids, minerals, protein and fiber, and offer low-carb, non-GMO and gluten-free alternatives for formulating baked goods. However, each nut flour also brings its own unique flavor and functionality.
“Almond flour, for example, benefits from a ‘clean’ taste, acting as a blank canvas for other flavors to shine and making it perfect for neutral products like pancakes. ofi’s almond flour is available in blanched or natural varieties, offering the choice between a lighter, finer flour or a more rustic, ‘home-made’ appearance with red and brown flecks. For imparting nuttier flavors to bakery products, cashew and walnut flours are an excellent choice for gluten-free pastries, whereas pistachio or hazelnut flours work well in baking, for cakes and desserts where a specific nut flavor is desirable,” says John Martin, Vice President Innovation at ofi.
You can read the rest of this article in the Spring Issue of Asia Pacific Baker & Biscuit magazine, which you can access by clicking here.