The benefits of soy protein were highlighted at the Northern Crops Institute’s Baking with Soy course attended by seven bakery managers and consultants from Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal Oct. 21-25 in Fargo. The institute is located on the NDSU campus.
The course was co-sponsored by the American Soybean Association World Initiative for Soy in Human Health Program, which brings the nutritional benefits of U.S. soy protein to people in developing countries. U.S. soybean growers created the program in 2000 to demonstrate their concern for the world’s undernourished and to promote new markets for U.S. soybeans.
“The participants at this course are from West Africa, specifically Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast and Senegal,” says Kim Rochette, west Africa project manager for Project Management Professionals, Senegal. “These countries are still developing, and there is malnutrition and a need for protein. One of WISHH’s main objectives is to address these protein deficiencies by promoting soy. These countries also are huge bread consumers so soy flour in bread is an ideal application for soy and a way to increase protein and the quality of the protein in daily diets.”
John Crabtree, assistant director of the Northern Crops Institute, coordinated the course.
Clyde Stauffer of Cincinnati-based Technical Foods Consultants was the course’s lead instructor. He focused on helping the team develop a better understanding of the various functional properties of adding soy to baked products. Stauffer also led sessions on calculating calories, using cost spreadsheets, and the various kinds of wheat and their flour characteristics.
Rachel Carlson and Natsuki Fujiwara, food technologists at the Northern Crops Institute, led the hands-on baking laboratories.
Suzanne Wolf, communications director for the North Dakota Soybean Council, welcomed the group on the first day of class.
Northern Crops Institute supports regional agriculture and value-added processing by conducting educational and technical programs that expand and maintain domestic and international markets for northern-grown crops. The institute is funded by the states of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota and commodity groups in those states and Montana.
NDSU is recognized as one of the nation's top 108 public and private universities by the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education.