Proximate, Antinutritional, Microbial, and Sensory Acceptability of Bread Formulated from Wheat (Triticum aestivum) and Amaranth (Amaranthus caudatus)

BACKGROUND: Breads are made throughout the world. Bread can be prepared from cereal like wheat, maize, and rice. Nowadays, gluten intolerance, requirement of healthy, and nutritious products have increased and interests towards underutilized crops have also been increasing with the aim of improving global food security and to ease an adverse effect of climate changes. Amaranth is one of nutritionally balanced and naturally grown underutilized crops, but it is mainly considered weed in Africa including Ethiopia. METHOD: The aim of the study is to develop bread from wheat and Amaranthus and to evaluate proximate composition, antinutritional, microbial, and sensory acceptability of bread. The experiment contained 100% wheat as control and four blending proportions (90% wheat and 10% amaranth, 80% wheat and 20% amaranth, 70% wheat and 30% amaranth, and 60% wheat and 40% amaranth). A complete randomized design is used for proximate composition, antinutritional, and microbial data analysis whereas a randomized complete block design with three replications was applied for sensory acceptability. SAS for windows version 9 was used for data analysis. RESULT: The study revealed that moisture, protein, fat, fiber, and antinutritional content were increased as Amaranthus concentration is increased from 10% to 40%. However, carbohydrate, microbial load, and sensory acceptability were decreased. But the gross energy is constant. CONCLUSION: From the study, it can be concluded that beside the good nutritional profile of Amaranthus, it has antinutritional content which needs to limit the concentration of Amaranthus in blending with other grains during product development.