Bakers turn to soy for quality enhancement

By David Ssempijja

Uganda’s baking industry is destined to benefit from increased productivity; with the latest development seeking to boost the value of baked products through integrating soy flour in the production process.

The project is spearheaded by the World Initiative for Soy in Human Health (WISHH), an American organization; in partnership with SESACO , a local firm producing a range of products from soy.

Promoters of this food value addition technology argue that products baked with defatted soy flour are richer in proteins, thus boosting human health; yielding value for money.

Though the usage of soy flour in various ways took long to reach Africa, it has existed for the last 4000 years in countries like America, China, Brazil among others, according to Charles Nsubuga, the managing director SESACO.

Nsubuga said that mixing wheat with soy will not only add nutritional value but also increases the product volume. For example if a baker targets 70 loaves of bread from  50 kilograms of wheat, adding 3% of soy  will scale up the number of loaves to between 73 and 74.

“It’s to the every baker’s advantage to integrate soy in order to attract more consumers, because people are getting more sensitive to the value derived from what they eat; when this projects succeeds in Uganda, all people will look for is soy bread,” he told bakers during an industrial project training at the Uganda Industrial Research Institute recently.

 Nsubuga has been undergoing a similar training exercise at the American University of Illinois; he is in turn building local skill capacity through training and supplying free testing samples to bakers.

 Baking experts say that soy flour also enriches bread with a better texture, crust, aroma and extends the bread’s shelf life by atleast two days.

 However, the technology that produces defatted soy flour suitable for baking has not yet reached Uganda, the flour is currently imported by SESACO; but plans to set up a processing plant for the same will be pursued when the innovation is fully embraced.

 “Hopefully, we envisage a larger market for soy in Uganda and this will serve as a driving force for agricultural development, thus mitigating household poverty,” Nsubuga told New Vision in an interview.