WJEC GCSE Food and Nutrition: Student Book

391 SECTION 4 EXAMPLE FOOD INVESTIGATION ASSESSMENT 3  Hypothesis In a sentence or two say what you are hoping to prove. 4  Plan of action This is where you explain what you are planning to do. Include a list of tasks or experiments you have decided to do and what you hope to find out. Plan of action: • I need to decide what my ideal pizza sauce is. What should the appearance, texture and thickness be like? • I need to find a recipe for my ideal pizza sauce which I will use as a standard recipe. • I need to decide on the ingredient variables I will include in my experiments. I also need to decide whether I will do experiments with different methods of thickening, like I showed in my mind map. • I then need to conduct my experiments (and provide my teacher with a requisition list for each practical). • I need to conduct sensory analysis to find out which is the preferred sample to use as a tomato sauce topping on a pizza. • I need to analyse my results and draw conclusions. Expanded plan of action I need to decide: what is my ideal pizza sauce? My ideal pizza sauce will be smooth and quite thick. It should not flow too much. This is because that is what I have seen from other pizza sauces. I particularly like the pizza sauce that is used in Pizza Express but I can’t buy that in the supermarket to use as a comparison, so I have found this own-brand product, which I am going to use as my control for the appearance, texture and thickness. I am not interested in the flavour (I think that is another experiment I could do if I had time). I need to find a recipe for my ideal pizza sauce which I will use as a standard recipe. I have decided to use the following base recipe and then I will add my different thickeners to this: 100ml passata (sieved tomatoes) 5g of thickener mixed with 20ml water into a slurry I predict that cornflour will produce the most appealing thickened pizza sauce – as it will be smooth, glossy and lump free. I predict some of the other starches might give me lumps in my sauce, especially wheat flour. I need to decide on the variables I will include in my experiments. The ingredients I will use are: 5g of each of the following: wheat flour, potato starch, rice flour, arrowroot, cornflour, cassava flour I then need to conduct my experiments. I will keep the method and quantities the same so that I have conducted a fair investigation. I need to conduct sensory analysis to find out which is the preferred sample to use as a tomato sauce topping on a pizza. I will do a range of sensory tests to ensure I record feedback on: • appearance  • texture   • thickness I then need to decide if I would benefit from any other experiments. If I have time I may repeat the experiments with different ratios of starch to passata. I may also look at different methods such as reduction and puréeing. I need to analyse my results (measuring appearance, texture and thickness) and draw conclusions. I will come up with recommendations and suggestions. My hypothesis is that the best way to thicken a tomato sauce suitable for a pizza topping is by using a cornflour slurry. This is an example of an excellent plan of action. The student has started with a summary of the plan of action and then this is expanded on in greater detail in a table. It is worth spending time on planning your Investigation. The hypothesis is clear and to the point.