The commercially produced breakfast cereals are mostly prepared using refined flour, which lacks essential nutrients and contributes to nutritional deficiencies. The breakfast cereal industry in Pakistan is still under-developed, this research was aimed at optimizing and developing processing technology to produce rolled corn flakes using traditional steam rolling methods. Torque for the corn was highly significant (P < 0.001) and values of R² and R² adj. were 0.994 and 0.933 respectively. Torque decreased with increasing value of input variables and its mean response was 17.504±0.315 Nm and 16.81±1.184 Nm. The water absorption index (WAI) for rolled corn was 3.57725. Crude fat, crude protein, crude fiber and ash content for corn flakes were observed as 3.86±1.52, 7.57±1.65, 5.88±2.06, and 1.27±0.24, respectively. Cooking time (CT) was the most dominant factor in determining the product characteristics, followed by baking time (BT) and baking temperature (BH). It can be deduced that breakfast cereals are a good source of nutrients and have good bioavailability of minerals. Commercial processing can be performed using this data.

Keywords: Rolled corn, corn flakes, process optimization, food processing