*2.1. Physical Properties*

The physical properties of the biscuits were determined by weight, diameter, thickness, spread factor, and apparent density. The physical properties of the biscuits are shown in Table 1. The biscuit weights ranged from 10.88 g to 13.41 g, with sample modification 1 (M1) presenting the lowest weight value (10.88 g) as compared to the control (C) (12.37 g). This decrease may be associated with the weaker water-binding capacity of mealworm flour than wheat flour, which may be responsible for moisture loss during the baking process, resulting in the lower weight of the biscuit. Moreover, in modification 1, as a result of the proportion of ingredients applied to the dough, the smallest amount of water was introduced in this batch. The smallest amounts of butter and flour were also used, with these ingredients being replaced by mealworm flour, which contains less moisture. The diameters of the biscuits were not significantly different (*p* < 0.05) and varied from 4.94 mm to 4.98 mm, whereas for the thickness, only sample M1 was significantly lower than the others (6.89 mm) (*p* < 0.05), which is correlated with the low weight of this sample. Therefore, the spread factor for this sample was significantly higher than

the other biscuits (7.18) (*p* < 0.05). Undoubtedly, this was a result of the largest amount of mealworm flour being added to this batch. The spread ratio is a measure of cookie quality. A higher spread ratio is desirable for better cookies, which indicates higher product performance [27]. On this basis, it can be concluded that a higher addition of insect flour may increase the product's yield. Similar results were noted for cookies prepared from amaranth flour—the obtained spread factor was 7.95 [28]. The spread ratios of the other samples did not differ significantly from each other (*p* < 0.05). For the studied biscuits, we also calculated the apparent density, which was significantly higher for biscuits with higher amounts of mealworm flour (M1 and modification 2 (M2)) than the others. Although there is not much research on insect supplementation of bakery products, cookies are a very popular matrix for assessing supplementation with other functional additives. Certain functional additives, such as the insect flour used in this study, cause similar changes in the physical properties of bakery products. For example, cookies enriched with dephytinized oat bran [29] and novel cookies with a sclerotium of edible mushroom [30] had higher spread ratios.



C—control sample; M1—modification 1; M2—modification 2; M3—modification 3. Mean values with different letters in each column are significantly (*p* < 0.05) different.
