Quality of wholemeal pasta made with pigmented and ancient wheats

Pigmented and ancient wheats are receiving increasing attention in food applications as they well reflect consumers' request for new sensory experiences, positive nutritional quality, and environmental sustainability. In this study, pigmented and ancient wheats were used in wholemeal pastas that were analysed considering their consumers' acceptability and preference, cooking, physical and nutritional quality. Pigmented and ancient wholemeal pastas were well accepted by consumers with liking scores >7 (1–9 hedonic scale) for overall liking, appearance, odour, taste, and texture. Pigmented wheat pasta was preferred (63%) over ancient wheat pasta (37%) due to its peculiar color and more complex aromatic profile that triggered consumers’ interest. Both pastas can be considered “high quality” due to their low cooking losses, and comparable physical properties to semolina pasta. Pigmented wheat conferred products total phenolic content and antioxidant activity significantly higher than ancient and durum wheat semolina, that were also partially preserved during cooking. Results suggested that both grains can be promising materials for producing wholegrain pasta, especially pigmented wheat which also delivered new sensory experience and potential health impacts to consumers.