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Latest Product Development Creates ‘Cleaner’ Gluten-Free Crust

Gluten-free pizza is set to grow and the secret to success is pizzas that taste as good as they look. Find out how your formulation for gluten-free pizza crust can be clear and cleaner whilst giving great mouthfeel, texture and crispiness.

The popularity of free-from is set to continue and market predictions see growth of 43% over 2015-20 to £673 million . However, free-from foods benefit from a ‘health-halo’ that gives them wider appeal and consumers are increasingly expecting free-from foods to be best-in-class. The BENEO-Technology Center has developed a way to combine its rice flour and rice starch ingredients that creates the perfect gluten-free, yeast-raised pizza crust and significantly reduces the complexity of the product’s ingredients list at the same time; ensuring it looks as good on label as it is does on the plate.

Cleaner label growth potential
A key way to harness the potential power of free-from is to create cleaner label formulations that taste as good as their gluten-containing equivalents. According to BENEO consumer research , 60% of European consumers often/almost always consider the ingredient list, the nutritional information and the claims on pack. In addition, more than half of European consumers (53%) are looking for food without preservatives and 50% are looking for food with no artificial additives (colours, flavours, etc.) .

Why pizza?
Pizza is an area of particular growth potential in the free-from arena. The number of pizzas launched globally with a gluten-free claim soared 58% between 2012-15 , while the number of pizza launches containing rice flour as an alternative ingredient to wheat increased from 78% to 90% between 2014 and 2015. However, the secret to success is creating pizzas that taste as good as they look. According to Alex Beckett, global food and drink analyst at Mintel, “[…] pizza is an inherently indulgent food, manufacturers need to magnify the quality appeal of their wheat-free pizzas and convince consumers that the taste and texture of wheat-free alternatives is akin to regular pizza.”

Rising consumer interest in “better for you” pizza:

BENEO cleans up gluten-free pizza crust labels
BENEO has developed a rice flour and rice starch ingredient combination that creates the perfect gluten-free, yeast-raised pizza dough and significantly reduces the complexity of the ingredients list at the same time. BENEO’s recipe for gluten-free pizza crust is clear and cleaner. The company’s unique rice flour/starch mix enables the ingredients listing of a standard gluten-free pizza to be reduced from this: water, rice flour, modified rice starch (INS 1403), potato starch, olive oil, evaporated cane sugar, tapioca flour, potato flour, fresh yeast, salt, xanthan gum (INS 415) and calcium sulfate (INS 516) – to this: rice flour, water, rice yeast

The secret of BENEO’s gluten-free pizza crust recipe is using two of BENEO’s speciality flours: BENEO’s newly wet-milled rice flour (Remyflo R7 90 T CP) and its brown rice flour (Remyflo C 200), instead of standard white flour. Wet milling allows the production of much finer flour particle sizes in Remyflo R7 90 T CP (below 90 micron) without severely damaging the starch granules. This also allows the starch granules to hydrate more easily and results in better dough handling. The granules very fine particle size also improves mouthfeel, texture and crispiness of the gluten-free pizza crust. Remyflo C 200 is used as well to promote the short bite and palatability of the crust.
i Source: Mintel Trends Report: Free-from Foods - UK - January 2016
ii Source: BENEO Consumer Research 2015
iii Source: Innova Market Insights, The global clean label phenomena; Trends, insights & implications, March 2015
iV Source: Mintel (2016)
V Source: Mintel Reports Pizza (2013)