Alternative Utilization of Storage Roots Flour of Yam Bean (P.erosus) in Wheat Flour-Based Food Products (Bread)

Like many countries in Asia, Indonesia use significant number of foreign exchange to import large quantities of wheat flour in order to satisfy the rapid growing domestic demand of wheat flour-based food products. At the same time many of these countries including Indonesia also produce different types of root and tuber crops such as cassava, sweet potato and yam bean that could be used to replace certain amounts of wheat flour in different food products. This research tries to explore the possibility of incorporating sun-dried storage roots flour of yam bean in making bread. Yam bean storage roots were sliced, sun dried and grounded to obtain yam bean storage roots flour. Composite flour was made by replacing 5, 10, 20, and 40% of wheat flour with yam bean storage roots flour. Results showed that substitution up to 20% of the wheat flour is possible to obtain bread with satisfactory properties. However, 10% substitution seems to be better for all sensorial quality attributes. The higher the substitution, the sweeter the product as indicated by the sweetness perception of the panelists. This finding indicates that it is not only technically feasible, but also economically attractive to use yam bean storage roots flour in preparing wheat flour-based food products (bread) with side effect of generating and broaden its additional uses as well as reducing wheat flour import.