Source: Radio New Zealand
Rescued Kitchen products. The Pantry / Rescued Kitchen / Instagram
University of Auckland students and a food upcycling company have turned old loaves of bread back into flour and then back into homestyle baking.
While the flour is a product of Rescued Kitchen, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering senior lecturer Febelyn Reguyal told Morning Report that the students analysed the environmental impact from the raw materials extraction of the leftover bread.
“They collect the leftover bread at the supermarkets, and then what they do is put it in a dryer, mill it, and then eventually you will have your bread flour.”
The drying process is very energy intensive, so the students recommended to the upcycling company that improvements could be made, Reguyal said.
Bread is one of the most wasted foods in the world, according to a study in the US National Library of Medicine, which estimated 24,000 tonnes of manufactured bread was binned each year.
The bread that was used in the experiment had to be of a certain standard – therefore mouldy bread was off the cards.
“That’s one of the requirements for the Rescued Kitchen because it has a short life, and sometimes we also overproduce the bread. We cannot use the bread that has already been consumed at home as the leftover bread, it has to be the clean and unused ones.”
The students presented their life cycle assessment reports to Rescued Kitchen co-founders Diane Stanbra and Royce Bold.
The reports concluded that rescued flour offered major environmental benefits compared to regular flour – using less water, land and fossil fuels, and producing much lower carbon emissions.
Rescued Kitchen’s bread flour has a shelf life of two years, freeze-thaw stability and complete substitution potential. And its capabilities have already been put to the test.
“Rescued Kitchen has already made some recipes and they also brought some products to the university and shared them with students. They had sweets as well as savoury muffins,” Reguyal said.
“They’re amazing. And I think all the students, including myself, I enjoyed the food brought by Rescued Kitchen.”
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– Published by EveningReport.nz and AsiaPacificReport.nz, see: MIL OSI in partnership with Radio New Zealand
