MODELING THE MOISTURE LOSS TRANSPORT OF PANTOA DURING DEEPFAT FRYING

Neethu, K.C., Magdaline Eljeeva Emerald, F., Heartwin A. Pushpadass, Menon Rekha Ravindra, Jayaraj Rao, K. and Surendra Nath, B. National Dairy Research Institute, Southern Regional Station, Adugodi, Bangalore- 560 030. E-mail: neethu.kc11@gmail.com Pantoa is a traditional Indian milk sweet popular in eastern region of the country. Deep-fat frying is the major processthe vital process involved in the production preparation of Pantoathis product. It is desirable to keep the oil uptake in the fried product to the minimum due to rising concerns over lifestyle diseases like obesity and cardiovascular diseases. The mMoisture loss transport studies during deep-fat frying are essential to understand the uptake of oil in the pantoa ball as itbecause oil uptake is dependent on the rate and mechanism of moisture transfer. First, Pantoa the dough for pantoa was prepared by blending khoa and chhana at a ratio of 4:5 ratio, along with other ingredients such as refined wheat flour (3%), semolina (3%), arrowroot (3%), ground sugar (0.7%) and baking powder (0.3%) to a homogeneous and smooth dough. The dough was rolled into balls weighing 15 g each, and fried in sunflower oil at temperatures of 125, 135 and 145C for 8 min. During frying, the core temperature of pantoa was recorded at every 10 s interval while the moisture content was analyzed at 30 s interval. After an the initial lag period, the core temperature increased linearly till it attained 10210.6C, and stabilized thereafter. Increase in frying temperature resulted in a reduction of At 125, 135 and 145 C oil temperature, moisture content of the product decreased from the initial value of 68.32% to 40.4, 38.2 and 32.0% (d.b.), respectively at 125, 135 and 145C, respectively. The The fat content increased with increasing frying temperature and time. Mmoisture loss transport was described modeled using Ficks second law of diffusion. The effective moisture diffusivity was estimated as 7.35x10-8, 7.47x10-8 and 1.0.1 x10-7 8 m2s-1 at 125, 135 and 145C, respectively. Thus, higher frying temperatures favoured moisture loss. The temperature dependency of moisture diffusivity was explained using Arrhenius equation. The activation energy for moisture diffusion was estimated as 21.82 kJmol-1 with a pre-exponential factor of 5.0 x10-5 s-1. The fitted model adequately described the moisture loss transport during deep- fat frying of pantoa with RMS root mean square error value of 7.13.