Peach dehydrated by a combined method of osmodehydration and lyophilization is characterized by upgraded dehydration effectiveness and enhanced chemical and mineral matter content, and as such, is an interesting material to be applied to the cookies' formulation. Incorporation of this material requires testing and optimization of the addition level from the aspect of overall technological quality in order to obtain a new cookie product. Obtained cookie samples with different levels of dehydrated peach addition were subjected to the nutritive and technology quality parameters testing. Cookies' chemical, mineral matter, and phenolic compounds content, the antioxidative activity of nutritive parameters, and the physical, technological, textural, colour, and sensory characteristics of technological parameters were investigated. Obtained results showed that the addition of especially higher levels of dehydrated peach enhanced all nutritive, while simultaneously decreased most of the technological quality parameters. The statistical method of Z-score analysis was used to calculate the optimal level of dehydrated peach addition to the cookie formulation for obtaining the highest nutritive enrichment without excessive technological quality deterioration. The optimal addition of osmodehydrated and lyophilized peach to the cookie formulation was determined to be 15%.
Keywords: cookies; lyophilization; osmodehydration; peach; quality optimization.