The products that tend to benefit the most are those that require fresh keeping, and in particular, those that also have a specific volume requirement. Most traditional pan breads are expected to be soft and light in texture and are now also expected to have shelf lives of up to three weeks. Anti-staling enzymes can help baked goods retain their original freshness for extended periods and can be used to improve volume and dough handling properties.
How to Evaluate Freshness
Expert sensory evaluation of bread is usually done three and 10 days after production, comparing the market standard to the new recipe. Parameters such as foldability, softness, moistness, crumbliness, and freshness are measured.
Some common tests to evaluate freshness over the course of several days are measuring firmness (units in HPa), also called crumb softness; and crumb resilience (units in %).
In Summary
By applying custom enzyme, emulsifier, and softener solutions, you can obtain optimal performance baked goods with enhanced consumer appeal, fewer returns, and improved consumer loyalty. Your potential product benefits include longer-lasting softness, fine homogeneous crumb structure, fresh mouthfeel, and improved resilience.
Aside from their specificity, enzymes often offer other benefits that stretch beyond the product itself. Enzymes can often replace substances or processes that may present safety or environmental issues, help reduce salt and sugar content of foods, and enhance nutritional value. Enzymes are very specific and will work under mild reaction conditions, allowing selective reactions in the presence of sensitive substances. Today enzymes are already used in a variety of foods from beer, dairy, oils and fats, meats, and of course, bakery products. However, innovative new applications and solutions are continuously being found together with food producers to help meet the needs of the growing population.
Saral is the global business director food enzymes for DuPont Industrial Sciences, Netherlands. Reach her at [email protected].
What Are Enzymes?
Enzymes used in food processes have the same properties as those found in nature. They are specialized proteins—but not living organisms. Enzymes are biodegradable proteins that act as catalysts helping the food manufacturing industry to reduce
food production costs, increase yields, enhance quality, and provide tastier, healthier, and safer food.They are enabling various industries to help guarantee quality and stability of products with increased production efficiency.
Enzymes are processing aids, not ingredients. Current labeling legislation does not require enzymes to be listed on product labels when used as processing aids because they have already performed the action they were intended to perform. Enzymes often perform different tasks from emulsifiers, and in most cases actively work with additives to provide a given effect in the finished product. The confusion arises when enzymes are presented as being equal to, or in some cases alternatives to, additives—this leads to the misconception that enzymes are additives.
All enzymes are proteins. They are made up of small amino acids strung together in a linear polymer. Enzymes can be found in nature and extracted from plants, bacteria, fungi, and animal glands. Commercial industrial enzymes are more commonly produced by microorganisms under optimized and contained conditions, or to a minor extent extracted from plant material. Commercial industrial enzymes share the same properties as naturally existing enzymes, and only small quantities are needed to perform the function (for instance, bread would contain less than 0.002 percent enzyme protein).
In some industrial enzymes, a small number of amino acids are changed to improve enzyme performance, for example, at different temperatures, or enhanced pH stability or increased specificity of the catalyzed reaction. This technology is referred to as protein engineering. Fermentation, recovery, purification, and formulation processing steps are controlled from start to finish and the enzyme is separated from its production microorganism after fermentation. The microorganism is then destroyed before being disposed of in a controlled way. Enzymes are finally formulated in either solid or liquid form and sold commercially to food manufacturers.
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