Use of D-Optimal Mixture Design in Optimizing the Quality Characteristics of Refined Wheat-Soybean-Oyster Meat Powder Composite Flour

The use of composite flours for domestic and industrial applications in baked and confectionery products has being seen as one of the ways for achieving sustainable food and nutrition security especially in developing countries of the world, however, its utilization might be limited by the quality characteristics of the resulting composite flour samples. In this research study, D-optimal design mixture was used to investigate the simultaneous effects of varying compositional percentage of refined wheat flour, soybeans flour and oyster meat powder on some proximate and pasting properties of composite flour. A total of 14 combinations were generated using Design Expert software. The properties of the composite flour measured showed a significantly (<i>p</i><0.05) influenced on the composite flour samples. The ranges of values for the properties are moisture content - 8.31- 12.25%, fat content - 1.46 - 9.41%, protein content - 11.34 -20.28%; while peak, breakdown and setback viscosities ranges from 418 - 1025cP, 220 - 515cP and 240 - 690cP respectively. The proximate properties of fat and protein contents increased with increase in soybean and oyster meat flour inclusion while moisture content decreased with increase in soybean and oyster meat flour inclusion. The pasting properties of peak, breakdown and setback viscosities were also significantly (<i>p</i><0.05) affected by varying percentage composition with the properties decreasing with increase in percentage soybean flour and oyster meat powder inclusion. The numerical optimization showed that the best combination of the individual flour were 72.00% refined wheat flour, 20.00% soybeans flour and 8.00% oyster meat powder with a desirability value of 0.719.