Gut-friendly bush tucker bread takes off in Darwin

A superfood bread roll made with Australian native bush foods and developed by University of Queensland researchers is now on the menu at Qantas Club in Darwin. UQ's Associate Professor Yasmina Sultanbawa worked with Indigenous employment provider Karen Sheldon Group to develop a healthy, long-life wholemeal bread using wattle seed and Kakadu plum rather than artificial additives. "The wattle seed bread is uniquely Australian, all-natural and very nutritious," Dr Sultanbawa said. "One wattle seed bread roll gives you the recommended daily intake of iron, zinc and dietary fibre - in fact one roll contains two-and-a-half times the iron, six times the potassium and nearly five times the zinc of an average white-bread equivalent." Dr Sultanbawa said ground wattle seed acted as a natural emulsifier to extend shelf life, while the powdered Kakadu plum was a natural bread improver. With funding from the Australian Government's Innovation Connections program, Dr Sultanbawa and her team at the Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Innovation worked to create the gut-friendly bread from ingredients harvested by Aboriginal communities. The team collaborated in the kitchen, the laboratory and in communities. "We had to identify which species of wattle seed, and how much of this seed would work in the bread, and we had to measure the nutritional benefits and storage potential," Dr Sultanbawa said.