Consumer Sensitivity and Freshness Evaluation of Bakery Products
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Date
2019-07-25
Authors
Zidan, Souzan
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
An-Najah National University
Abstract
Focaccia is a typical bakery product in Italy, which is highly appreciated for its sensory characteristics and has its own market. Its quality deterioration during storage is caused chiefly by various deteriorative events which include the loss of crispness linked to high water activity, starch retrogradation and lipid oxidation. The loss of freshness in bakery products negatively affects consumer’s liking and the product’s quality. The freshness perception of a food during its shelf life depends on both the sensory properties of the food and the consumer’s ability to perceive a sensory deterioration. Consumers differ in their abilities to perceive tastes and textures, and these perception differences may lead to different preferences. Sensory methods can be used to understand individual sensitivity of consumers. The main purpose of this research is to evaluate consumer perception of focaccia samples stored at different times and to explore whether there is an association between consumer sensitivity and the perception of focaccia samples. Focaccia with two different toppings (tomato &olives (F1), and frozen onion with oregano (F2)) were considered in this research. All samples were stored for 7, 15, 30, and 60 days at 20ºC. Consumer sensitivity to taste, odor and texture were evaluated by using PROP status test, odor pens test, and hardness test, respectively. Weibull distribution was used to describe the rejection function. CATA method was used to determine sensory attributes of focaccia samples. Nighty-nine consumers participated in the consumer test. Consumers were asked to eat each sample of focaccia and to answer the question:" Would you normally consume/buy focaccia? Yes or No?". They were asked also to choose the most suitable attributes that can describe the samples and to evaluate their liking by using 10cm scale anchored from “the most unpleasant imaginable” to “the most pleasant imaginable”. From survival analysis, it was observed that the acceptance percentage for samples stored for 60 days was slightly higher for samples F2 (50%) compared to (47%) for samples F1. The shelf life was estimated as the storage time that corresponded to 50% consumers acceptance in 58 ±6 d, and 61±5 d, respectively for samples F1 and F2. For sample F1, CATA questions results showed that there are significant differences for both negative attributes (stale, dry tomato, hard,
raw dough) and positive attributes (soft, typical focaccia flavor, sweet tomato, fresh tomato). In the same way, for sample F2, CATA questions results showed that there are significant differences in terms of both negative (stale, hard, onion taste) and positive (soft, pungent onion taste) attributes. For both types of samples, it was also noted that fresh samples were liked as the as those stored for 60 days. Our findings also showed that there is no significant association between liking scores of focaccia and socio-demographic variables (age and gender). We recommend that the current study should be followed up with larger number of consumers. Future studies should also assess participants’ psychological and personality traits.
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Keywords
bakery products , shelf life , sensory attributes , Check-all-that-apply (CATA) , texture sensitivity , odor sensitivity , PROP sensitivity