Shelf life extension of baklava by slowing down the loss of green colour and texture, and lipid oxidation

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Marash Ice Cream and Coffee Inc., located in Montreal, is the first industrial producer of Turkish style**Baklavas and pastries in North America. This company produces a variety of Baklava confections, ice creams,**pastries, and puddings with various nuts and fruits. Baklava consists of a tight stack of 40 layers of paper-thin**filo dough, layered with chopped nuts (walnuts and pistachios) and imbibed with syrup. but Marash prefers to**use Kus boku, Bozici, and Antep & Siirt pistachio because of their excellent color and flavor, though Turkish**Baklava producers prefer Kirmizi and Uzun pistachio cultivars for the production of baklava and nut paste**(Kunter, Gulsen, & Ayfer, 1995). When pistachio nut paste containing water, fat, protein and sugar comes in**contact with sugar syrup makes it susceptible to deteriorative reactions such as loss of green color**(discoloration) and lipid oxidation during processing and storage of this product. Pistachio nut paste is rich in**lipids with water activity (Aw) of around 0.7 that is conducive to lipid oxidation, because the lipid oxidation**rate is rather high in foods with water activities between 0.65 and 0.85 (Ozcelik &Evranuz, 1998). The**discoloration issue is related to chemical changes in pistachio nut pigments, primarily chlorophylls and others**such as cyanidin-3-galactoside, and lutein (Bellomo & Fallico, 2007). Thus, the objective of the project is to**find ways to extend the shelf life of baklava by slowing down the loss of green color, the loss of crunchy**texture and lipid oxidation upon storage at ambient temperature.