**7. Conclusion**

Fresh rice flour noodles with enhanced textural and mechanical properties were prepared by incorporating soy protein isolate, MTG, and GDL. Improvements in specific properties can be attributed to enhanced cross-linking of proteins due to MTG and GDL-induced cold gelation at reduced pH values.

*Innovative Application of Soy Protein Isolate and Combined Crosslinking Technologies… DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.103154*

Upon air-drying, the structurally enhanced RNS-COM showed longer cooking time and reduced cooking yield that could be solved by employing pre-drying steaming treatments. The robust network in air-dried RNS-COM can be opened by superheated steam, which allows for faster gelatinization, evidenced by reduced enthalpy, increased cooking yield, and sustained crystallinity of the starch granules in the noodle matrix.

Therefore, the superheated steam processing of RNS improves the cooking characteristics and textural qualities of dried rice-flour soy protein isolate noodles.

### **Acknowledgements**

This research was funded by the Ministry of Higher Education, Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS/1/2019/STG01/USM/01/1). The authors would like to acknowledge Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) for the Fellowship awarded to Moses Ojukwu.

### **Conflict of interest**

The authors declare no conflict of interest.
