Texture profile analysis (TPA) was conducted on seventy balady bread samples collected from different five Egyptian governorates (i.e. Cairo, Giza, Beheira, Sharkia and Beni Suef) with the aim of developing a new and fast method to assess the staling of the Egyptian flat balady bread as a function of different TPA parameters. Results obtained from the TPA were compared against the classical Alkaline Water Retention Capacity (AWRC) method of bread staling determination over a storage period of three days. Hardness, adhesiveness, resilience and chewiness were found to increase as the storage period of bread samples increased, while cohesiveness decreased with the storage. The obtained results of TPA showed that among different TPA parameters, hardness, adhesiveness, cohesiveness and chewiness were highly correlated with the staling rate (SR) during a three days storage period with values of correlation coefficients ranging from 0.821 to 0.973, while other TPA parameters (i.e. gumminess, resilience and springiness) were weakly correlated with the staling rate. Moreover, moisture content was linearly decreased as the storage of bread increased from 36.78 at the zero time to 33.19% at the third day. Derived mathematical models to calculate the AWRC and SR were significant and of the linear type with moisture content, time (day), hardness, cohesiveness, adhesiveness and chewiness as independent variables, with reasonable adjusted R 2 (0.55 and 0.41), and adequate precision values (31.57 and 18.68) for AWRC and SR, respectively. Validation of the new method, as assessed by ttest, showed that the differences between AWRC and SR values obtained by our method were not significantly different (P<0.05) from those of their counterparts obtained by the classical AWRC method at the different storage times of bread. Our new method can be used as an alternative to the classical AWRC method with reliable, fast and accurate calculated values of both AWRC and SR.

This study is a trial to produce healthy biscuits supplemented with nutritional sources belonging to several plant families, rich in antioxidants. The investigated sources used for supplementation were thyme (herbs), parsley (vegetables), and kidney bean (legumes) to obtain healthy biscuits. The Statistical analysis of the organoleptic evaluation showed that biscuits supplemented with 3% thyme, 5% parsley and 15% kidney bean of wheat flour (72% extraction) had slight significant differences compared with the control biscuits. Therefore they were chosen to be evaluated chemically and biologically. The results of chemical evaluation showed that biscuits supplemented with 15% kidney bean had the highest value of protein content (6.88%) and crude fiber content (0.77%), while had the lowest value of carbohydrates content (6.88%) , biscuits supplemented with 5% parsley had the highest value of ash content (2.58%), while all samples of supplemented biscuits had nearly the same contents of fat which ranging from 19.55 to19.59% compared with the control biscuits recording 5.59% of protein, 19. 45% fat, 0.40% crude fiber, 2.51% ash and 72.05% carbohydrates. Data also showed that all samples of supplemented biscuits had higher antioxidant activity, compared with control biscuits. The highest antioxidant activity was found in the biscuits supplemented with 3% thyme of wheat flour. It is well known that high antioxidant activity extends the shelf life of produced biscuits. The results of biological evaluation showed that all subgroups of healthy rats fed on supplemented biscuits had higher values of food efficiency and HDL cholesterol, and lower values of glucose, total triglycerides, total lipids, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, risk ratio and LDL/HDL ratio compared with subgroup of healthy rats fed on control biscuits (Control C). All subgroups of diabetic rats fed on supplemented biscuits diets had the lower values of glucose, total triglycerides, total lipids, total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, risk ratio and LDL/HDL ratio compared with those of diabetic rats fed on basal diet (Control B), and diabetic rats fed on control biscuits diet (Control D). The highest significant decreases of these parameters were found in rats fed on biscuits supplemented with thyme. On the other hand, HDL cholesterol value increased in all subgroups of diabetic rats fed on supplemented biscuits diets, and the highest value was found in rats fed on biscuits supplemented with thyme compared with controls B and D. So it could be recommended to incorporate the investigated nutritional sources in bakery products to produce healthy products having good biological effects especially diabetic and hypercholesterolemia patients.