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![Photo: Oats, barley, and some products made from them. Link to photo information](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120924195904im_/http://www.ars.usda.gov/is/graphics/photos/aug01/k9566-1i.jpg)
All-oat or all-barley breads that ARS scientists
are developing may offer a different array of vitamins, antioxidants, fiber,
protein, and other healthful components than that in whole-wheat breads.
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Inventing New Oat and Barley Breads
By Marcia Wood
February 25, 2010 Delicious new all-oat or all-barley
breads might result from laboratory experiments now being conducted by
Agricultural Research Service (ARS)
scientists in California.
Research chemist
Wallace
Yokoyama and postdoctoral nutritionist
Hyunsook
Kim want to develop new and tasty whole-grain oat or barley breads that
offer antioxidants, fiber, and other components in an array different from that
found in today's whole-wheat breads. The researchers work at the ARS
Western
Regional Research Center in Albany, Calif.
In preliminary experiments, Yokoyama, Kim and their colleagues made
experimental all-oat or all-barley breads, as well as whole-wheat breads, using
a commercially available, plant-derived carbohydrate known as HPMC (short for
hydroxypropyl methylcellulose). They are interested in HPMC as a substitute for
gluten.
Gluten traps the airy bubbles formed by yeast, lifting doughs to form high,
attractive, nicely textured loaves. But HPMC can perform that essential
biochemical chore, too. That was shown many years ago in research with rice
flour, conducted by now-retired Albany scientist Maura M. Bean.
Yokoyama and Kim determined that barley, oat, and whole-wheat breads made
with HPMC had cholesterol-lowering effects. They found this in tests with
laboratory hamsters that were fed a high-fat diet and the experimental breads.
The HPMC that the scientists are investigating is derived from a plant
source proprietary to manufacturer Dow Wolff Cellulosics of Midland,
Mich. Though this HPMC is widely used in familiar foodsas a thickener,
for instanceits cholesterol-lowering properties as an ingredient in
whole-grain breads havent been widely studied, Yokoyama reported.
Read
more about this research in the February 2010 issue of Agricultural
Research magazine.
ARS is the principal intramural scientific research agency of the
U.S. Department of Agriculture.