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.

Germinated brown rice flour has received much attention due to its health-functional ingredients such as dietary fibers. However, the food industry has faced challenges of using germinated brown rice flour in processed foods because it causes undesirable quality attributes such as high cooking loss and sticky texture. In this study, three different types of food additives (starches, hydrocolloids, emulsifiers) were incorporated into the formulation of extruded rice cakes and their combined effects on the cooking loss and textural properties of the germinated brown rice cakes were investigated. The addition of emulsifiers had a tendency to increase cooking loss and soften the noodle texture. Most of the starches except gelatinized and high-amylose rice flours showed similar effects to the emulsifiers. Xanthan gum, gelatin, and HPMC were positively effective in reducing the cooking loss of the rice cakes and increasing their hardness. When the ingredients were combined, the mixture of saemimyeon rice flour, HPMC, and xanthan/agar reduced the cooking loss by 66.7%. Most of all, this study provided an ingredient map that was plotted on the axis of hardness and cooking loss, depending on single and combined treatments of various ingredients.