An Assessment of the Textural Characteristics of Wheat-cassava Bread

This study presents the textural characteristics of wheat-cassava bread in terms of its response to compression, piercing and tearing forces. High Quality Cassava Flour (HQCF) has been found suitable for incorporation into wheat flour for the production of acceptable bread . This work was , therefore , done to determine the effect of cassava flour inclusion in wheat flour and resultant changes in texture of the composite bread . Compression , piercing and tensile or tearing tests were performed with a Universal texture testing machine Testometric (M500). Results showed that there was no significant change recorded (p<0.05) in the compressive strength of the test bread samples until day 2 of storage, i.e. the third day after baking. In terms of piercing strength , the 20% cassava bread was significantly different (p<0.05) from the others and in terms of storage time, days 0 and 1 recorded lower values while days 2 and 3 had higher values, implying a harder texture in all the samples with storage . With respect to tearing force , the Control bread sample (without HQCF inclusion) had significantly higher tearing force (p<0.05) which decreased with storage days, compared with the other samples having different levels of HQCF inclusion and indicates loss of elasticity and freshness in the bread. In all the samples, there was significant variation in the values recorded on days 0 and 1 compared with those of days 2 and 3, with the 15% cassava bread sample showing higher tearing force with increasing storage time. On the whole, textural changes observed were not significant (p>0.05) until day 2, i.e. the third day after baking and though the Control with no cassava was markedly different from the others, the cassava samples were comparable in texture. Storage time was found to influence textural characteristics in terms of compression more than the level of cassava inclusion while both level of cassava inclusion and storage time seem to affect piercing as well as tearing strengths. From this study, the inclusion of up to 20% cassava does not seem to impair the texture of wheat/cassava bread.