A novel, simple, economic and effective method for retarding maize tortilla staling

BACKGROUND: Staling of maize tortillas is a major drawback affecting their manufacture, commercialization and consumption. The development of methods that may help retard staling of maize tortillas is an ongoing research topic. In this work, a novel, simple, economic and effective method is proposed, based on adding completely gelatinized nixtamalized maize flour (GMF) dispersion to the basic masa formulation recipe (water, 600 g kg⁻¹; nixtamalized maize flour, 400 g kg⁻¹) in substitution of 50, 100 and 150 g kg⁻¹ of water. RESULTS: Masa added with GMF showed increased water retention capacity, reduced freezable water content and improved flow and dynamic rheological properties and produced tortillas with decreased firmness. The infrared 1047/1022 cm⁻¹ spectral ratio indicated that a more disordered starch granule arrangement was formed, while enthalpy peaks associated with starch retrogradation decreased. All the above indicators were more pronounced the higher was the GMF content. CONCLUSION: This work showed that GMF can play the role of a self-hydrocolloid anti-staling agent by retarding the retrogradation of maize starch and deterring the loss of water and rheological properties of masa and the increase in undesirable sensory characteristics of tortilla such as increased firmness.