Photo Source: Babushahi Bureau
PAU organizes workshop on use of millets in Bakery & Confectionery
Babushahi Bureau
Ludhiana, March 31, 2023: The Department of Food and Nutrition, College of Community Science, Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), organized a two-day workshop on “Use of Millets in Bakery and Confectionery” in order to popularize the consumption of millets as a part of celebrations of the International Year of Millets.
As many as 55 participants, including faculty members and students of the college, attended this workshop of healthy baking with millets. Alpna Gupta, Mapic Foods Private Limited and Manjit Kaur, Dusky Tarte, were the resource persons for the workshop. Both the experts are the trainees of the Department of Food and Nutrition, and successfully running their own Bakery units.
Dr Kiranjot Sidhu, Dean, the College of Community Science, appreciated the efforts of the department in popularizing the use of millets.
She further emphasized that the training in bakery and confectionery will also give opportunity to prepare students to set up their own establishment and become job providers instead of job seekers.
She stressed that the practical skill in quality confectionery and large scale baking will give the students the required confidence to start their own ventures.
Dr Kiran Grover, Head of the Department, informed that millets are often called “Nutri- Cereals” due to their high nutritional content and dietary fibre. Millets are good source of protein, micronutrients and phytochemicals, and have many nutraceutical and health promoting properties. They are gluten free and can be a substitute for wheat or gluten containing grains for celiac patients, she added. The workshop intends to promote the replacement of refined flour with millets to make healthier bakery products, she said.
Alpna Gupta and Manjit Kaur demonstrated the use of different millets in bakery and confectionery products like jowar cake, ragi cookies, ragi bounty balls, multigrain cookies, multigrain cake, dates and walnut cake using jaggery.