Structural characteristics and in vitro starch digestibility of pasta made with durum wheat semolina and chickpea flour

Chickpea flour contains large fractions of protein and dietary fiber, which offer benefits for human health. This work studied the characteristics and in vitro starch digestibility of pastas with blends of semolina and chickpea flour. Texture analysis showed that chickpea flour induced significant reductions in hardness and elasticity of cooked pasta. The addition of the chickpea increased protein solubility (150–200%). The accessible thiols showed a marked increase, indicating that the formation of a protein network relied on sulfhydryl crosslinking between proteins and other pasta components. FTIR analysis showed that the above characteristics may be linked to the secondary structure of proteins since chickpea tend to form structures with a high content of β-sheet configurations. The main advantage of using chickpea is in the in vitro digestibility since the effective starch content decreased from 74.67 ± 0.95 g/100 g for semolina pasta to 41.25 ± 1.17 g/100 g for chickpea pasta. The rapidly and slowly digestible starch fractions exhibited notable reductions of up 45%, which was attributed to the formation of complexes and to protective physical barriers of proteins on the starch granule. Non-conventional flours offer certain benefits for pasta formulations, but also certain challenges to stabilizing the pasta structure.