A. How does the ingredient you experimented with the effect of the food’s overall characteristics? Be specific and discuss the chemical structure of the ingredient and the chemical structures of the aspects of the food the chosen ingredient interacted with as part of your answer!  

 

The chosen ingredient that my partner and I chose to experiment with was the different types of flour that can be used in banana bread. The features we had focused on included the rise, the elasticity, and the moistness. Flour contains a certain amount of gluten (or not at all) and will overall impact whether the bread can maintain the shape or not. Without gluten, gas bubbles are lost and a denser bread is produced. We were able to see this in the product of all three loaves of banana bread.

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Many natural foods such as vegetables and fruits are already gluten-free, including coconut flour. Gluten is a certain protein that is found in most flours and it plays a long process in the baking process. Gluten is filled with these gas bubbles produced by yeast and is strengthened by starch to help maintain these gas bubbles. Without gluten, these gas bubbles are lost and produce denser bread. The coconut flour bread (gluten-free) was incapable of staying together, it wasn’t even possible to get the bread out of the pan in one piece.

 

B. How successful was your experiment in helping you understand your food and improve its characteristics? What would be the next steps if you were to continue research on this topic? In support of your answer you might choose to discuss any of the following or other questions of your own design:

• To what extent did your experiment yield conclusive results?

• What might be altered in your experiment to increase your confidence in your results?

• Were your measurements of the IV and DV accurate and precise?

• Was your choice of DVs relevant for the desirability of the food?

• Were you asking a relevant question? What question do your results make you want to investigate?

 

Our experiment was overall very successful when it comes down to understanding how the gluten in flour works, and plays a role in both physical and senses features. It eventually comes down to personal preference on the desired physical appearance and taste. We had conducted three different experiments with three different flours, and it makes us questions about how other flours will have impacted our results. Are there flours out there that contains a large amount of gluten, and how would including that impact our banana bread’s shape? And although there was a 12-hour time limit on one of the experiments, I’m curious for the results if we were to allow the bread to mold.