DisplayTitle

An increase in celiac consumers has caused an increasing interest to develop good quality gluten-free food products with high nutritional value. In this sense, flours from different products have been used to substitute durum wheat semolina to develop pasta that satisfies the nutritional need of specific people such as those following a celiac diet. To the date there is some information on composition of gluten-free pasta but no available information about the digestibility of these products. Therefore, the goal of this study was to determine the chemical composition, cooking quality and starch digestibility of gluten-free spaghetti elaborated with mixtures of chickpea, unripe plantain and maize flours. Chemical composition, cooking quality and starch digestibility were measured accordingly to AACC official methods. The <i>in vitro</i> rate of hydrolysis was measured using hog pancreatic a-amylase, according to Holm <i>et al.</i> (1985). The gluten-free spaghetti presented a higher protein, fat and ash content than the control semolina spaghetti. The solid loss among all the gluten-free spaghetti was in the range of 10.04–10.91% and not significantly different from each other. The gluten-free spaghetti had lower available starch and higher resistant starch contents which were associated with their lower rate of hydrolysis and predicted glycemic index. The results of this study showed the potential for developing gluten-free spaghetti with reduced amount of glycemic carbohydrates from suitable mixtures of chickpea, unripe plantain and maize flours.