Sensory and instrumental study of Taralli, a typical Italian bakery product

Taralli is a bakery snack food, typical of the south of Italy, that has currently become very popular worldwide as a savory snack or bread substitute. However, few studies have focused on its physical and sensory characteristics. The present work aims to select sensory and instrumental information that is able to characterize Taralli with similar formulation and size. For sensory characterization purposes, conventional profiling was applied on samples from different producers. All samples were also subjected to physical analysis of appearance and textural proprieties. Three samples of the set, differing only in storage time, were evaluated to assess changes in sensory characteristics during this period and a discrimination test (triangle test) was also applied for this purpose. The test results confirmed that the sensory analysis allowed a description of the entire range of characteristics resulting from stimulation of senses by physicochemical properties of the food. This methodology was effective in evaluating the quality characteristics and identify differences between Taralli samples during different storage times. Instrumental tests were also applied to assess food quality. The results revealed that a combined approach allowed obtaining more information about the product characteristics and definition of quality standards. This study also suggests the use of physical parameters obtained by simple and rapid instrumental tools can support sensory analysis, especially for evaluations that are fatiguing, when decisions made with the sensory data are critical or to provide objective reference standards that are suitable for training purposes.