Insights into sensory and hedonic perception of wholegrain buckwheat enriched pasta

Abstract This study investigated different wholegrain wheat/wholegrain buckwheat blends to develop functional pasta with unique sensory properties. The impact of the buckwheat flour type (native or hydrothermally treated) and ratio between wholegrain wheat and buckwheat flour in pasta formulation on the sensory profiles and hedonic perception of pasta was studied. A range of techniques (principal component analysis, preference mapping, cluster analysis, penalty analysis) have evolved to combine data from sensory panel, data collected from consumers and data related to the product to provide valuable insights into the way in which sensory properties drive consumer preferences and how pasta can be design to give the sensory properties desired by the consumer. Generally, even though buckwheat flour incorporation decreased consumer acceptability, the results indicated that hydrothermal pre-treatment of buckwheat flour has promising potential to be implemented in the production process of buckwheat containing pasta, since this treatment was efficient in reducing pasta bitterness and grittiness which were negatively evaluated and strongly penalised by consumers.