The demands of rice products have been steadily increasing because of their non-allergenic-functionalities. However, the use of rice flour in the gluten-free food industry has been still limited due to undesirable quality characteristics derived from the weak structural network by the lack of gluten. Therefore, there is a need to search for new approaches to enhance the structural network of gluten-free foods. In this study, zein, protein derived from corn, was applied to rice noodles as a structural network provider for sheeting and the rheological and structural properties of the rice noodles were investigated depending on the particle size of rice flour. The starch damage of the rice flours increased with decreasing particle size. The zein-rice flours with smaller particle size exhibited greater water hydration properties and pasting parameters that contributed to the increased elastic characteristics. The use of zein positively contributed to the formation of sheeted rice dough that could be successfully slit into noodle strips. The zein-rice noodles with medium particle size (100–150 mesh) had the highest breaking stress and hardness values that were correlated to the lowest cooking loss. This study thus provides a new opportunity for food industry to improve the qualities of gluten-free rice noodles by controlling particle size.

Zein/Poria cocos extract nanofibers were prepared based on the electrospinning of aqueous solutions with different Poria cocos extract concentrations (0, 5, 10, and 15 wt.%). The electrospinning parameters, including the polymer contents, voltage, and tip-to-collector distance (TCD), were optimized for the fabrication process. The resulting electrospun materials were all characterized using field-emission scanningelectron microscopy (FE-SEM). The diameters of the electrospun zein nanofibers were found to increase when increasing the zein concentration.

To investigate the effects of co-solvents on the morphology of nano-scale zein materials, zein solutions were electrospun with different co-solvent ratios of EtOH/H2O. Different zein solution concentrations were used to study the effects of the zein content on the electrospun materials. The resulting electrospun materials were all characterized using field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The diameters of the electrospun nanoparticles and nanofibers were found to increase when increasing the EtOH ratio at certain zein concentrations. Furthermore, increasing the zein content changed the morphology of the electrospun materials from nanoparticles to nanofibers.