International Journal of Food Science and Nutrition

Authors
D Sowmya, R Renu, Srinivas Maloo

Abstract
Foxtail Millet is considered as underutilized cereal and its potential is not fully exploited as energy dense nutritious food that can help in malnutrition and preventing and curing lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and obesity. To explore its full potential as a regular ready to cook breakfast food, foxtail millet was pre-treated with treatments like roasting (T2), soaking and tray drying (T3) and soaking and roasting (T4) before processing them into semolina and flour. The raw foxtail millet was considered as Treatment (T1). The semolina is extracted in Hammer mill and analyzed for the physical properties like bulk density, swelling power and Solubility Index, Emulsion activity (%) and emulsion stability (%), Foam capacity (%) and foam stability. The semolina sample (T3) was promising in terms of physical properties. The ready to cook breakfast such as Idli and Dosa prepared from foxtail millet and black gram in 70:30 ratio. The rice based Idli and Dosa kept as control to assess the nutritional and sensory attributes. There is an increase in the nutritional values of the samples compared to the control sample with the exception of the carbohydrate content and the replacement of rice with the foxtail millet decreased the carbohydrate content and increased the protein, fat, fiber and total ash content in both Idli and dosa. Moisture content was maximum decreased in roasted grains (61.61%) than soaking and tray drying (63.17). protein content was high in raw foxtail millet (16.11) as compared to control samples (12.26), pre-treatment significantly decreased protein content maximum reduction was observed in soaking and tray drying sample(14.28). Fat content was high in T1 sample (3.49) and minimum reduction was observed in roasted sample (3.38). Pre-treatment significantly increases crude fibre content maximum increased in soaking +roasted sample (13.96) followed by roasted sample (13.61). The sample ‘T3’ has better acceptance in terms of sensory attributes as compared to other samples.