3.2. Sensory analyses
Table 2 summarizes the results of the Difference from Control test. Mean sensory scores showed a slight difference between FPBFB and blind control. Appearance and tactile by direct touch presented a significant difference after the third day of frozen storage, while mouthfeel presented significant difference after the second day, average between 1.9 (slight difference from blind control) and 2.6 (between slight and moderate difference). Fresh bread tactile by direct touch and
mouthfeel scores did not present a significant difference related to control during the studied period. However, all scores for FPBFB were less than 3.0 (that means moderate difference from blind control), indicating that the panelists, during the studied period, considered FPBFB to be similar to fresh bread. Fik and Suro´ wka (2002) studied the effect of prebaking and frozen storage on the sensory quality of bread. Fresh full-baked product was characterized, prior to freezing, by high sensory quality, obtaining a score of 31 points out of 32. The process of freezing and 1 week storage produced by itself a relatively small change in the quality, reducing the score by only six points; moreover, from the fifth week of storage onwards the score remained constant (21 points) until the end of storage period. Mean sensory scores obtained from the Consumer Acceptance test are shown in Table 3. A cursory look at the table shows that all mean hedonic scores of FPBFB were generally high. A two-sample comparison analysis was performed and Fig. 3 presents frequency histograms comparing responses of sensory attributes from the Consumer Acceptance test. The frequency of each class (FPBFB—light shade, and commercial brand—dark shade) is represented by a vertical bar whose height is equal to the frequency of responses. In this figure it can be observed that the frequency of responses of the highest hedonic scores of all FPBFB sensory attributes were high indicating a strong consumer appeal in comparison with those of commercial brand. They
represented an approval percentage (like moderately, like very much and like extremely scores) between 62.1%
and 87.4% in all parameters. Specifically for the appearance attribute, FPBFB had 74% of response
frequency for surface gloss, 40% for roughness of the surface and 42% for cut on surface related to like very
much and like extremely scores, while the commercial brand had 18%, 14% and 14%, respectively. Purchase
intent responses differed significantly as shown in Table 3. ‘Definitely would buy’ and ‘probably would buy’ scores were higher for FPBFB than for those of the commercial brand. These results show that appearance of this kind of bread is an important attribute for consumer, confirming the preference scores.