Food technologists have devised a way to keep chapattis fresh longer. They say chapattis when partially baked and kept frozen to be rebaked just before use are the best bet1.
Conventional chapattis made of wheat flour begin retrograding after 24 hours of baking in ambient temperatures. The effect of conventional and partial baking and storage at two different temperatures (ambient and −18 °C) on the texture of chapattis was evaluated using tensile deformation and the extent of retrogradation. The extensibility of the conventionally baked chapatti decreased by 58.7% and 20.15%, respectively after storage of 24 h at ambient and frozen temperature.
However, partially baked chapatti showed a much lower decrease of 3.7% and 0.01% in extensibility when stored under the same conditions. Chapattis, both conventionally and partially baked stored at ambient temperature showed higher retrogradation enthalpy than their counterparts kept at −18 °C.
Frozen partially baked chapattis after thawing and rebaking showed a texture equivalent to that of conventionally baked chapattis.
The authors of this work are from: Department of Food Science and Technology, Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, India and Cereal Group, Institute of Agrochemistry and Food Technology, CSIC, Valencia, Spain.
