The demand for gluten-free products, including pasta, is increasing and rice pasta accounts for the largest share of this market. Usually, the production of rice pasta requires additives or specific technological processes able to improve its texture, cooking quality, and sensory properties. In this work, two rice cultivars, with different amylose content, were subjected to parboiling, micronization, and flour air fractionation to obtain brown rice pasta, without any supplement but rice itself. In particular, two types of pasta (spaghetti shape) were produced, one from 100% micronized wholemeal, and the other from refined rice flour replaced with 15% of the air-fractionated fine fraction. Regardless of the cultivar, pasta from wholemeal micronized flour showed higher protein and fiber content than refined flour enriched with fine fraction, whereas no differences were revealed in resistant starch and antioxidant capacity. Pasta from the high amylose content genotype showed the highest resistant starch content and the lowest predicted glycemic index along with sensorial characteristics as good as durum semolina pasta in fine fraction enriched pasta. Besides the technological processes, pasta quality was affected the most by the genotype, since pasta obtained from high amylose cv Gladio resulted in the best in terms of technological and sensory quality.
Keywords: air fractionation; brown rice; micronization; parboiling; rice pasta.