Nutritional benefits of soy protein in baked products were highlighted at the Baking with Soy course, which ran from Aug. 25-29 at Northern Crops Institute on the NDSU campus. Bakery managers from Burkino Faso and Cote d’Ivoire, Africa, attended the course.
The World Initiative for Soy in Human Health, known as WISHH, co-sponsored the course. The effort is a program of the American Soybean Association that brings the nutritional benefits of U.S. soy protein to people in developing countries. Additional partners for the course were North Dakota Soybean Council, Minnesota Soybean Research and Promotion Council, Cenex Harvest States and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Soybeans have a high level of protein, and one of the most promising uses is in bakery products. The course highlighted the use of soy ingredients in baking applications by elaborating physical dough properties, baked product quality and technical specifications of soy ingredients.
“Cote d’Ivoire is about the size of North Dakota, but with a population of 23 million, it exemplifies the importance of using soy flour to help balance human nutritional needs in their country,” institute director Mark Weber said.
John Crabtree, institute assistant director, coordinated the course. Lecturers included Rachel Carlson, food technologist; Natsuki Fujiwara, food technologist; Thunyaporn Naggie Jeradechachai, crop quality specialist; and Clyde Stauffer, Technical Food Consultants, Cincinnati, Ohio.
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.