Assessment of wheat bran bio-valorization on the quality of cold extruded pasta

• Arabinoxylans in wheat bran are modifiable through targeted fermentation • Ferulic acid esterase plate screening facilitates the selection for arabinoxylans-modifying lactic acid bacteria. • Increased liking of spaghetti with fermented vs unfermented wheat bran Wheat bran (WB) has a promising nutritional profile; however, intrinsic components such as insoluble pentosans negatively impact its technofunctional properties, limiting its application in end-products. Incorporation into food products can be enhanced by enzymatically converting water-unextractable arabinoxylan (WUAX) into its water-extractable form (WEAX). Despite its potential, the integration of WB into food products such as pasta has been minimally explored. This study aims to achieve the enzymatic conversion of WUAX to WEAX through targeted fermentation. To this end, a phenotypic screening of 155 lactic acid bacteria (LAB) strains was conducted, revealing 28 consistently positive strains. Four strains were applied in model WB fermentations, where they increased WEAX content up to ca. 35.32±35.49%. Three S accharomyces cerevisiae strains with reported unspecific xylanase activity were tested, but did not lead to an increase in WEAX when applied in single-strain fermentations, whereas LAB-yeast co-cultures led to av. 21.9±13.28% WEAX increase. Finally, a Levilactobacillus brevis-S. cerevisiae co-culture was selected for a scaled-up fermentation (750 g) followed by integration of the fermentate in pasta production. The resulting pasta quality measurements failed to reveal significant differences between fermented and non-fermented WB. However, hedonic tests revealed higher acceptance of pasta with fermented WB compared to the unfermented version but lower acceptance than traditional durum spaghetti. Consequently, the selected process for altering fiber in WB resulted in products with higher potential consumer acceptance. The chosen dough analysis methods lacked the sensitivity to detect differences produced by this method, emphasizing the need for further investigation in this promising field.