MALTFLOURS (Innovative composite flours to improve the nutritional quality of fortified bakery products) is a Romanian–Hungarian EUREKA project (E! 12616), funded by UEFISCDI from national funds (PNCDI III) under funding contract no. 131E/2020, and implemented between January 2020 and December 2022, in three annual stages. The project director was Dr. Eng. Alexandru Cîrîc.
Objectives
The main scientific and technical objective was to develop families of high value-added bakery products with multiple functional effects, by defining new concepts, recipes and manufacturing technologies based on plant-based functional ingredients. The project stages were:
- specifications, design and preliminary studies (selection and characterisation of raw materials, premix formulation);
- development of technologies for functional flours and ingredients, and of the documentation for fortified bakery products, at pilot level;
- production of functional bakery products at pilot level, scale-up and industrial validation.
According to the final report, the objectives and results agreed in the consortium were fully (100%) achieved.
Results
- A technology for producing flours from malted or unmalted cereals, legumes and oilseeds as functional ingredients (premixes) for bakery products.
- Two premixes validated at industrial level: one based on amaranth flour and a blend of legume malt flours (chickpea, green lentil, red lentil), and one based on defatted pumpkin seed flour and barley malt flour.
- The technology for making bread with these premixes; bread with the amaranth and legume-malt premix is recommended as able to carry the “source of protein” and “source of fibre” claims under Regulation (EC) No 1924/2006.
- The patent application “Composite-flour mix for nutritionally improved bread”, filed with OSIM by ICA R&D, Politehnica University of Bucharest and Dobrogea Grup.
- Dissemination through papers in Agronomy (2020) and Agriculture (2021) and participation in industry events.
Partners
- ICA Research & Development SRL – coordinator
- Politehnica University of Bucharest – partner 1
- Dobrogea Grup S.A. – partner 2 (industrial operator)
On the Hungarian side, the 2018 EUREKA project application included the University of Debrecen and Balmaz-Sütöde Ltd. (Balmazújváros) in the consortium. The stage reports below cover the work of the Romanian partners.
Stage reports
The reports for the three stages are available below, in Romanian only. The Stage I and II reports come from web pages archived from the previous website, in which the figures were not preserved.