Bread is the oldest and most essential food consumed by humans, with its consumption exceeding nutritional needs and becoming part of cultural habits. Fermentation is an important step in the bread-making process, giving it its rheological, organoleptic, aromatic, and nutritional properties. Lactic acid bacteria and yeasts are both responsible for the fermentation step and part of the natural flour microbiota. In this study, we aimed to characterize LAB in three types of flour, namely, wheat, oat, and rice flour, using conventional phenotypic and biochemical assays and to carry out molecular-biology-based characterization via studying the rrn Operon using RFLP of the ITS region and via PCR using species-specific primers. Additionally, the effect of LAB diversity among the three types of flour and their influence on dough characteristics were assessed. Also, we evaluated the antagonistic effects of LAB on two bacterial (E. coli and S. aureus) and two fungal (Botrytis and Fusarium) pathogens. This study showed that LAB are not the predominant species in rice flour, while they were predominant in wheat and oat flour. Additionally, Lactobacillus sanfranciscencis was found to be the predominant species in wheat flour, while its presence in oat flour was minor. Finally, through their production of soluble substances, LAB exerted antagonistic effects on the four types of pathogenic microorganisms.
Keywords: ITS; Lactobacillus sanfranciscencis; RFLP; antagonistic effect; fermentation; lactic acid bacteria.