High-quality, gluten-free doughs and bakery products are clearly more difficult to produce than wheat flour-based products. The poor quality of the breads that are currently available demonstrates that manufacturing remains a significant technological problem. This is mainly due to the absence of gluten, which has a huge negative impact on dough rheology and bread characteristics. Gluten replacement is still the major challenge in the development of doughs and baked goods. The literature documents various improvement strategies. The most active approach seeks to identify alternative ingredients that can mimic the viscoelastic properties of the gluten network, notably hydrocolloids, enzymes, emulsifiers, and alternative sources of protein. However, other innovative strategies, such as high pressure, using heat to dry flour, and sourdough fermentation, have been investigated. In this context, the first aim of this review is to summarize current knowledge regarding gluten-free doughs, breads, and bakery products. Secondly, as it is clear that the manufacture of gluten-free products remains a key challenge, it suggests some improvement strategies that can boost their nutritional, technological, and sensorial characteristics.

Pasta, bread, and bakery products are considered worldwide as essential foods for human nutrition. In particular, ancient wheats and whole wheat flours, despite being able to provide health benefits via bioactive compounds, present significant technological problems related to poorer dough rheological properties and final product characteristics. Moreover, both the food industry and consumers are increasingly sensitive to environmental impacts, highlighting the urgent need for sustainable innovations and improvement strategies, from cradle to grave, for the entire production chains, thus motivating this review. The aim of this review is to provide technological innovations and improvement strategies to increase the sustainability, productivity, and quality of flours, pasta, bread, and bakery products. This review is focused on the main operations of the production chains (i.e., wheat cultivation, wheat milling, dough processing, and, finally, the manufacturing of pasta, bread, and bakery products). To achieve this goal, the use of life-cycle assessment (LCA) analysis proved to be an effective tool that can be used, from early stages, for the development of eco-friendly improvement strategies. The correct management of the wheat cultivation stage was found to be essential since it represents the most impacting phase for the environment. Successively, particular attention needs to be paid to the milling process, the kneading phase, to breadmaking, and, finally, to the manufacturing of pasta. In this review, several specifically developed solutions for these essential phases were suggested. In conclusion, despite further investigations being necessary, this review provided several innovations and improvement strategies, using an approach “from cradle to grave”, able to increase the sustainability, productivity, and final quality of flour, semolina, pasta, bread, and bakery products.

Major pasta industries have started to evaluate the environmental footprint of their productions exploiting both Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and, in some cases, Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) methodologies. In this research, two different pasta production chains were considered: a “high-quality pasta” chain (referred here as “local or regional scenario”), which follows traditional procedures in a Tuscan farm that uses only ancient wheat varieties; and a “conventional pasta” one (referred here as “global or industrial scenario”), in which pasta is produced using national and international grains, following industrial processes. An integrated methodology based on both an Environmental Impacts ANalysis (EIAN) approach and the LCA has been developed, analyzing five environmental compartments (i.e., soil, water, air, resources, climate change) and a total number of ten expected environmental pressures. As a result, the high-quality pasta chain shows a better performance in terms of risk reduction of soil degradation and agrobiodiversity loss, as well as the consumption of non-renewable resources; this is mainly due to the use of lower quantity of chemicals, a lower mechanization level in the agricultural phase, and the use of ancient grains. However, the conventional pasta chain prevails in terms of a more efficient exploitation of land and water resources, due to higher yields and the use of more efficient sprayers, and also in reducing noise emitted by the overall production equipment.

Many types of baked goods are firmly rooted in the food habits of many people in different countries. Although there have been great strides in improving milling, kneading, and baking, given the lack of essential studies, further steps forward need to be taken to understand the effects of storage time and environmental storage conditions, thus motivating this work. The aim of this study is to assess the effects of storage time, using one-way ANOVA, and environmental storage conditions (environmental temperature and humidity), using MOLS analysis, on flour composition, dough rheology, and biscuit characteristics. Seven levels of storage time were tested: T0 (control), T1, T2, T3, T4, T5, and T6. The results showed that flour storage time significantly increased dough tenacity (P) and curve configuration ratio (P/L), and decreased the biscuit volume (best at T0). However, 2–3 weeks of storage highlighted a significant increase in deformation energy (W), an essential alveograph parameter that is closely correlated to the technological success of leavened products. This optimum found for W might be considered as a great stride in understanding the effects of storage time, confirming that wheat flour can reach its optimal performance after two-three weeks of storage, in particular for W. Moreover, this information could be useful, not only for biscuits production, but also for bread and bakery products (and, thus, the entire bakery industry). MOLS analysis highlighted that dough rheology and biscuit characteristics are mainly affected by flour composition (primarily from starch content) rather than environmental storage parameters. In conclusion, to optimize the biscuit characteristics, it is necessary to use flours with a low content of damaged starch by selecting the most suitable milling technique and carefully managing the operative parameters.