Minor Details
Flour, fat and sweeteners establish the basic structure in a baked product, but they do not totally control the result. Various combinations of leaveners, for example, can dramatically affect the texture and eating quality of cakes or cookies. Proper enzyme selection can make the difference between a bread that maintains desirable softness or turns into a gummy mess. Because a detailed overview of how to select minor ingredients for bakery mixes would prove lengthy, only the special challenges for premix formulation will be reviewed.
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Leavening agents. After mechanical aeration, leavening agents further expand the air cells during baking. One common leavening agent is yeast. Admittedly, yeast - even active dry yeast - isn't often added to bakery premixes. Nevertheless, formulators must consider the potential yeast choices of the premix's end user, and test accordingly.
For example, a bakery mix might be targeted for those consumers who are more likely to use active dry yeast. At the same time, the company could decide to market the same thing to retail bakers who are more likely to use compressed yeast. The formulator must be sure to test the premix with both, and optimize the formula no matter what type of yeast is used. Another situation is creating a custom premix for a specific wholesale baker client. Here, the simple solution is to obtain samples of the yeast the client uses. For the most part, however, premixes for general sale will be used with a variety of yeast types with varying quality levels.
With chemically leavened premixes, this variability is eliminated as the leavening system is usually designed especially for the formula and is included in the premix. Here the challenge is to ensure that they release carbon dioxide at the correct time.
In theory, bakery premixes - whether dry blends, bases or concentrates - should be of low enough moisture to avoid premature CO2 release. However, premixes might be stored in humid conditions or water could be added to a batch only to have mixing and baking delayed. Building tolerance to such situations demands more thought when specifying chemical leaveners.
"Particle size is enormously important in leavening action," Beavan says. "Or, you could use some sort of encapsulation to control release of some of the acid if you wanted to slow down the leavening action."
One concern about encapsulated leavening agents, however, is that encapsulation adds to the cost of the ingredient. "Ingredients for bakery foods are looked at in terms of pennies per pound. It doesn't take much to put the mix a cent or two over," Schierioth says. "It may not be quite the case for foodservice or grocery products, because you have different margins. But for industrial products, the cost of an encapsulated ingredient can definitely make a difference."
So, then, how can a food technologist formulate his or her way out of this situation? One way is to adjust the manufacturing order of the premix so that the leavening is blended with the fat and becomes coated.
Emulsifiers. We've already discussed the importance of emulsification because mixes usually are made up with single-stage mixing. Emulsifiers also help build tolerance into a mix because a consumer - or even a large bakery - may allow doughs and batters to sit out.
Without an extra boost of emulsification, the air cells can coalesce, resulting in uneven crumb texture. In the finished product, the emulsifiers maintain a desirable soft texture. Each of these properties require thorough bake testing during development. As part of these tests, the food technologist must examine "stress" conditions: under- and over-mixing, time delays between mixing and baking, and storage testing. In particular, storage tests must be performed not only on finished product, but on the premix itself, to check for potential ingredient interactions. Ethoxylated mono-diglycerides, for example, can react with ascorbic acid, causing the premix to develop an undesirable color.
Enzymes. Bakery premixes usually are distributed and sold at ambient temperatures, which might turn out to be rather warm in distribution. Under such conditions, common baking enzymes tend to quickly lose their activity. Any storage tests should confirm survival of enzyme activity in the finished premix. If formulating a premix for industrial use, it may be simpler just to leave enzyme dosing to the end user.
Dough oxidizers. Although potassium bromate once was the oxidizer of choice, it has fallen out of use throughout the world. Bromate-free oxidizing systems are available, but often contain ascorbic acid which can have some negative interactions with other ingredients. Ascorbic acid also is unlike bromate in that it doesn't consistently provide oxidation where needed: at the proofing stage and into the oven. Fortunately, food technologists can minimize this effect in a premix.
"There are two ways this is typically done," Beavan explains. "First, you could give the system something else to oxidize, such as l-cysteine active dry yeast. Or, you could choose to coat the oxidizer." By skillfully choosing the fat, the coating thickness, and the balance between coated and uncoated oxidants, the formulator can tailor the rate of the ascorbic acid reaction so that it approaches that of bromate.
Oxidants may interact with other ingredients. This may simply reduce the overall oxidizing capability in the premix, or may even lead to unsightly dark spots or off-colors in the premix. Again, the only solution is thorough storage testing.
Flavors. Using flavor ingredients in bakery premixes isn't much different than in scratch bakery formulas. Other flavor-contributing ingredients, such as nuts, dried fruit pieces, etc., are a different matter. Because of the intensity of mixing in a premix, these ingredients will tend to break up and lose desirable piece identity. In a premix, they should be added last and mixed just enough to distribute evenly. For consumer premixes, another option is simply to include a separate package of the pieces in the same box. For industrial premixes, such ingredients may just be left out and the wholesale or retail baker allowed to add their own "finishing" ingredients.
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