The structural and functional properties of physical modified rice flour, including ultrasound treated rice flour (US), microwave treated rice flour (MW) and hydrothermal treated rice flour (HT) were investigated with wet-milled rice flour (WF) used as a positive control. The results showed the presence of small dents and pores on the rice flour granules of US and MW while more fragments and cracks were showed in HT. XRD and FTIR revealed that moderate ultrasonic treatment promoted the orderly arrangement of starch while hydrothermal treatment destroyed the crystalline structure of rice flour. In addition, the significant decrease of gelatinization enthalpy and the narrowing gelatinization temperature were observed in US. Compared to that of SF, adding physical modified rice flour led to a batter with higher viscoelasticity and lower tan δ. However, the batter added HT exhibited highest G' and G″ values and lowest tan δ, which led to a harder texture of bread. Texture analysis demonstrated that physical modified rice flour (except HT) reduced the hardness, cohesion, and gumminess of rice bread. Especially, the specific volume of bread with US increased by 15.6% and the hardness decreased by 17.6%. This study suggested that ultrasound treatment of rice flour could improve texture properties and appearance of rice bread.
Keywords: properties; rice bread; semidry-milled rice flour; ultrasound.