Blog #4: Finalizing the Product

This week, we finalized some of the details of our product. In order to keep our product gluten free, we determined that it was possible to replace flour with potato starch as a binder within the ball and as the predust in the batter and breading system. We determined that it is possible and financially feasible to use gluten free bread crumbs to keep the product gluten free. We also determined that the bread crumbs need to be chopped up much more finely to insure a homogenous pickup and appearance. We determined that our par frying time should be approximately 20 seconds and the full frying time should be approximately 1 minute and 15 seconds. We performed a product analysis by weighing the cooked balls before predusting, after predusting, after battering, after breading, and after frying, and determined that we had approximately a 6 gram (15%) pickup, a 1.2% frying loss, and no noticeable oil pickup from the fryer. We also performed a sensory analysis survey within the department. Some of the comments said that they would like more spice in the balls and would like for the balls to be smaller and more bite sized. In order to satisfy this, we plan to make the balls smaller which will allow the batter and breading yield to increase and will allow the frying time to be reduced. We also plan to make a spicy creole mustard dipping sauce which will bring more spice to the product for those customers who desire more spice. On another page in the e-portfolio shows a picture of the evaluation (sensory) sheet with the answers recorded from evaluations that we took. In our evaluations we also asked for people's hometowns due to certain regions liking fried foods vs. not, as well as some regions liking spicy foods vs. bland foods.

Below attached is the weights recording from 10 of our boudin balls and the pickup after the pre-dust, egg wash, bread, and after frying. This calculations and formulas were the same used as the ones we used in lab before starting the project.