CAROTENE REDUCTION LEVEL IN THE PROCESSING OF PUMPKIN INSTANT BROWNIES

. Pumpkin is a local food of Jember which the amount of harvested area and productivity is increasing every year. Pumpkin is a source of beta carotene with a relatively lower price than other beta carotene sources. Diversification of pumpkin-based food products will produce nutritionally rich products with added value. Brownies are one of the bakery products that can be processed with 100% pumpkin flour as raw material, increasing the added value can be done by diversifying it into semi-finished products with pumpkin steamed brownie premix flour. The objective was evaluated carotene level changes as its functional component in the diversification process. The research method used was descriptive evaluating changes in carotene in 6 treatments of pumpkin steamed brownies premix flour formulations. Based on the results of the study, the most abundant carotene was found in the 100% pumpkin flour formulation treatment, namely 77.99 mg/100g in premix flour and 5.05 mg/100g in steamed brownies. The higher the pumpkin content, the lower the degree of reduction in total carotene will be.


INTRODUCTION
According to FAO, local food is food that is produced, marketed and consumed by local or local communities. Meanwhile, according to Law No. 18 of 2012, local food is food consumed by the local community according to local potential and wisdom.
Based on this, local food refers to food that optimizes local resources that were previously consumed for generations by the local community both in fresh form and processed into local specialties (UU No 18 Tahun 2012 Tentang Pangan, 2012) One of the reasons for consuming local food is food safety and quality as well as the impact on the environment because local food has a close distribution distance. Local food should be positioned as part of the national food system because it has the potential to achieve food security, fulfill nutrition and drive the local rural economy.
One of the efforts made by the government in including local food in the national food system is to encourage the cultivation of local foods and food product diversification based on local food ingredients (UU No 18 Tahun 2012Tentang Pangan, 2012.

Pumpkin is one of the local plants in
East Java whose harvested area, production and productivity continues to increase every year. In order to diversify local food products made from pumpkin, various studies have been carried out on processing pumpkin into semi-finished and ready-to-eat food. These products include pumpkin flour and various processed bakery products that were commonly consumed by the surrounding community (Indriyanti et al., 2017;Nuraliza & Fadilah, 2016;C. . Nurjanah et al., 2017;N. Nurjanah & Usmiati, 2006;Pramudito & Salim, 2020).
However, no study has been carried out in the production of premix flour for bakery products. Based on its characteristics, pumpkin flour cannot trap gas in the dough, so the bacterial product that is more suitable to be developed with pumpkin flour raw materials is brownies.
Brownies are a type of non-expands chocolate bakery but has a moist inner texture, dry top textured, and has a sweet taste and a distinct chocolate aroma.
Beta carotene is one type of carotenoids, apart from being provitamin-A, beta Carotenoids also act as antioxidants effective at low oxygen concentrations.
Some of the properties of beta carotene include being fat-soluble, soluble in nonpolar and semi-polar solvents, and sensitive to free air oxidation (Priyadarshani, 2017). Among these properties, there has not been a study on the effect of heat processing on betacarotene where in general food processing processes for diversification of processed pumpkin products using heat include pasteurization, steaming, boiling, or roasting temperatures. In terms of pumpkin diversification into pumpkin brownie premix flour, heat processing was carried out in the manufacture of flour, as well as heat processing when steaming the brownies (Toan et al., 2018). Source: (Wahyono et al., 2020) The Production of Pumpkin Flour 20 kg of local Jember pumpkin was peeled and removed the seeds and matrix.

The research was conducted in
Furthermore, the pumpkin was washed using tap water and sliced with a thickness of 2 cm. The pumpkin was soaked in 0.2% sodium metabisulfite for 23.05 minutes.
The pumpkin was then drained and dried at 85C for 11.4 hours using a food dehydrator.
Dried pumpkin was ground using a grinder and sieved at 80 mesh size (Wahyono et al., 2018).

Carotene Analysis
The emulsion product is weighed as  Table 2. The product produced in this study is actually a semi-finished product ready to be processed which is pumpkin steamed brownies premix flour, but to ensure product quality that will be accepted by consumers, testing was also carried out on the final product that will be consumed by consumers, namely, pumpkin steamed brownies. So that the total carotene test was carried out both on pumpkin flour as a raw material for the product, premix flour which will be processed by consumers, and  the lower the total carotene reduction rate in the pumpkin steamed brownie product that will be processed by consumers.
according to Figure 2,  with non-polar substance, fat globule will also bind the starch that swelling is not optimal. Even though according to its function which can form a matrix layer, it is expected to protect carotene during the dough processing and steaming.

CONCLUSIONS
The higher the content of pumpkin flour, the total amount of carotene in premix flour will be higher and the rate of decrease in total carotene will be lower.
Wheat flour has an effect in reducing total carotene in product formulations. The increase in the addition of pumpkin flour in the formulation of pumpkin steamed brownie premix flour causes gluten to not work optimally in protecting beta carotene in the processing.