Incorporation of Fermented Brewers Spent Grain in the Production of Sourdough Bread
, Annie Haynes 1, Niels van der Heijden 1,2, Hao Liang 3, Paraskevi Paximada 1 and Antien Zuidberg 1,2Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This work describes the impact of BSG sourdough on bread quality, including biochemical, microbiological, textural and sensorial analysis of sourdough and bread. The topic is interesting considering the attention to food byproducts and their inclusion in innovative recipes. However, in my opinion the experimental design is not well explicated and the inclusion of the characterization of commercial bread made without BSG is, in my opinion, confusing.
I think that manuscript must be improved also considering the literature already focusing this topic.
- The evaluation of organic acid could be rewritten considering that lactic and acetic acid production by lactic acid bacteria is a process studied by several authors. Usually the content of both organic acid is expressed using molar concentration (mmol/kg or mmol/g) instead mg/g. The main reason is that it is possible to evaluate their production by homofermentative or heterofermentative LAB. Moreover, in 3.2.3 the increase of lactic acid was found similar to the acetic acid one. It is unusual considering that heterofermentative LAB could produce MAXIMUM 1 mol of lactic acid (MW:90) and 1 mol of acetic acid (MW:60) from 1 mol of glucose. Therefore, please check results or try to find an explanation.
- Please write the particle size of fine FBSG considering that this parameter could influence texture also texture and sensory appreciably of bread.
- Please explain better how sourdough control bread was made and all the bread making process including samples collection for each analysis
- Please add a paragraph describing statistical analysis
- Please include p value when correlation was evaluated
- Please change value 0 with n.d. in Table 1
- Please add a reference describing cooperation between yeast and lactic acid bacteria in sourdough (paragraph 3.2.1)
- Please use the fermentation quotient instead lactic/acetic ratio
- Please add references after "This is very likely due to the use of different bacterial cultures and/or different combination of bacteria and yeasts, but could also be attributed to different raw
ingredients and processing conditions of the dough through to the final baked product." - Please simplify the first part of 3.2.2. The terms "with regards is redundant"
- Please explain the number of consumers for each sensory analysis and explain the meaning of the descriptors
- In the phrase "Much of the sourdough is not sold and neither is it consumed on the day of production [36,37], instead sourdough is often consumed many days post-production." the terms sourdough is referred to bread?
- In my opinion the evaluation of commercial sourdough bread evaluation differences between artisanal bakery and supermarket is interesting. However, I think it is out of topic. Moreover, no information about samples (some sourdough bread supplied by supermarket could be produced by local bakery). I suggest focusing the attention in fortified FBSG bread
- In paragraph 3.2.3 change "a series of organic acid" with "the main organic acids produced during sourdough fermentation"
Moreover, I suggest including evaluation of organic acids of crust and crumb of FBSG and/or other evaluations of FBSG and FBSG bread such as nutritional importance of fortification (e.g. fiber and protein contents increase) or other functional properties which are extensively found in literature.
Author Response
See attached PDF
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
In "Materials and Methods" paragraph, any section regarding the part of "Statistical Analysis" is missing. In my opinion it should be included, also to understand which software has been used to elaborate analysis of data.
On page 2 it says "2. . Material and Methods"-> remove the point before Material
Page 2-> "from Rowton Brewery in Shropshire, UK following the production" should be changed to "from Rowton Brewery in Shropshire, UK, following the production" i.e., should be placed the comma after UK
page 2-> "Following the completion of the SSF, the fermented" the acronym SSF has never been described in full in the text, so always on page 2 when it comes to "solid-state fermentation" should be put in brackets this acronym
page 3-> "2.2 . Analysis" remove point before Analysis
page 3-> "Samples were placed on a white tile each time to ensure the back-ground was consistent) and the L* a* b*" remove bracket after "consistent" and comma
Page 3-> "panellists used descriptive analysis to assess the bread for; texture, colour" remove the ";" after "for"
page 3-> "were stomachered in a =Stomacher® 400" Camlab, Seward, Worthing, UK) after 400 put the brackets and not the quotation marks
page 3-> "3.1 . Bacterial Solid-State Fermentation of Brewers' Spent Grain" remove the dot before bacterial page 4-> "were ground in order to make the it easier to incorporate" to replace with "to make it"
page 4-> "3.2 . Sourdough production" remove point before sourdough
table 2-> in the table the ratio 4.76 is written with a different font than the others
Author Response
See attached PDF
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 3 Report
Manuscript Number: fermentation-1230071
Title: Incorporation of fermented brewers spent grain in the production of sourdough bread.
Overview and general recommendation
The article structure is compact, sequential and logical. The data are adequate to support the conclusion. The methods section provides sufficient information on design, sampling, definitions, data collection and data analysis. References are up-dated adequate and correctly cited.
Minor comments:
- I consider that the part of the Results and Discussion it should not contain discussions about the results for which no data are presented.
The authors carry out an interesting work and I recommend it for publication.
Comments for author File: 
Comments.doc
Author Response
See attached PDF
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Dear authors,
I think that the revision inproved manuscript and the scientific soundness.
I suggest to correct the p value in the senence "All breads (control and
FBSG addition) gradually became firmer over time in an initial linear fashion (R=0.997, p<0.000) (Figure 3), which is to be expected for any bread without commercial additives to retard staling of bread"
Author Response
We have addressed the p-value as requested. However, we used p<0.000 because convention dictates that any p-value smaller than 0.000 indicates a large enough significance where a p-value with more than 3 digits after the decimal place does not create a greater meaning. However, we included the actual p-value and show the fourth digit after the decimal place (p=0.0004).
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper can be accepted in the present form
Author Response
Thank you
