You love the zesty flavor of salsa, but a bagel would be more convenient and would see you through until dinner. So what do you have for lunch? Why, a "bagelrrito," of course!
That was the thinking of a team of food science students at UC Davis that combined the best attributes of two popular foods--bagels and salsa--to invent what they had hoped would be an award-winning new food product. And, indeed, the bagelrrito was chosen as one of six semifinalists in a national student contest sponsored by the Institute of Food Technologists.
It all started last fall when Professor Norman Haard's food product ideas class accepted the challenge of dreaming up a new food product to be entered in the annual contest. In previous years, UC Davis students have concocted a variety of new products such as a frozen-fruit dessert pizza, a heart-shaped liqueur-and-fruit ice cream and a chocolate or vanilla-flavored coffee soda.
"This year we wanted something that was healthy and convenient, and that students could take along for lunch," said Rosa Kwan, a member of the original 11-person student team. The students settled on the bagel-salsa hybrid because both products are nutritious and trendy.
While a salsa-stuffed bagel sounds great, it presents numerous challenges. For one, salsa is soggy. And while refrigeration is good for preventing microbial contamination in salsa, it can send bagels right into the stale zone.
To solve these problems, the students tapped the expertise of UC Davis faculty members and experts in the food industry. After much consultation and experimentation, they decided to increase the acidity of the salsa to ward off microbial contamination, add enzymes to the dough to keep the bagel moist and stir in special chemicals that would decrease the flow of moisture from the salsa to the bagel. And to further keep the salsa and the bagel dough in their places, the students encased the salsa in an edible collagen tube, much as sausage is contained in links.
In June the team took their invention to New Orleans for final judging. Unfortunately, it didn't place among the top three. The Cornell University team took first place with its thin chocolate-covered cookie sticks for adding specialty flavors to coffee.
But, said Professor Haard, the bagelrrito bunch--the only team composed entirely of undergrads--tackled tough technological problems and represented UC Davis admirably.
Photos: Neil Michel/Axiom
