Warming Up to Hot Breakfast Cereals - Part One
By Kimberly J. Decker, Contributing Editor
The Nitty-Gritty
Sugar and Spice
Sweet Things
Fruits of Labor
When the crisp morning air makes a warm bed tougher to escape than a maximum-security prison, it's hot-cereal season. While that used to mean day after day of the same old porridge, the variety of value-added products proves that hot cereals are no longer run of the mill. Processors can choose many ingredients, ranging from flavors to fortification mixes, that will make their cereals stand out. So, whether consumers want a nutritional edge or great taste with convenient preparation, today's hot-cereal options give them reason to rise and shine.
When most people think of hot breakfast cereals, they think "oatmeal." The toasted flavor of oat products accounts for this popularity, according to Kris Nelson, sales and marketing, Grain Millers Inc., Eden Prairie, MN. But what about other grains? Wheat flakes, particularly the white wheats that have a cleaner flavor than red wheat varieties, are used in hot cereals. Case in point: Cream of Wheat, in regular-cooking and quick-cooking forms. Barley cereals also exist, and the beta-glucans found throughout the barley endosperm - as well as the grain's low-fat content and unique flavor - will likely increase its popularity. Nelson reminds processors not to forget about rye - packed with flavor and fiber of the insoluble sort - when formulating hot breakfast cereals. She just urges them to pay close attention to factors that affect the grain's color, including growing conditions and processing time and temperature.
Some processors drum-dry flaked rice and other grains, such as barley and oats, for baby foods. The process yields large, yet thin, flakes ideal for producing the creamy consistency sought in baby foods.
Most hot breakfast cereals undergo minimal processing. Basically, manufacturers just dry-blend the grains, and any flavors, sweeteners, fortification mixes, add-ins and other ingredients in a tumbler, and then package the product. So, grain processing for hot breakfast cereals remains confined primarily to grain-milling, a practice that has changed very little in years.
Millers usually employ an impact process that splits the hulls from the kernels, or groats. Then the oats are stabilized through kilning, where the high heat denatures enzymes responsible for lipid oxidation. The high temperature and fat combine for "that nice, toasted flavor that everybody's accustomed to," says Nelson. After milling, most grains have very low moisture levels - typically in the range of 8% to 10%, with oats on the low end thanks to kilning.
Following kilning, the oats get steel-cut to size, undergo another heat/steam process for softening, then go through a flaking roll that modifies thickness. "The thickness will determine your texture and cook time," Nelson explains. "Even with barley and wheat, it's roughly the same sort of thing. With barley, you have to pearl it to get the husk off. Then it'll go through some cutting rolls. Then it's going through that same steam/heat treatment and into the flaking rolls to alter its thickness."
Primarily, these thickness variations set instant and quick-cooking grains apart from traditional ones, with the former two flaked more thinly to permit quicker liquid absorption. "Sometimes," explains Nelson, "it's that the steel cut can be more fine or more coarse before it hits the rolls." While regular and faster-cooking grains might have a different toast level to eliminate some raw notes, "The oats in them are the same. They're processed slightly differently, but they're the same oats from the same field," says Ted Moeller, interim director, hot breakfast R&D, Quaker Oats Company, Chicago. The whole-berry nature of regular-cooking cereals gives them the longer cooking times. Cooking times vary according to flake thickness in other grains as well, with whole-kernel flakes rehydrating slower than the rest.
Thinner flakes allow for relatively quick microwave preparation, but "microwave rehydration and preparation are not as straightforward as they may sound," Moeller says. Whereas some consumers pour the dry cereal and water or milk in a bowl, mix it, and then cook it in the microwave, others will simply boil water in the microwave or on the stove and then pour it over the cereal mix. The preparation differences become evident in the finished product's texture, with the microwaved cereal possessing a pastier texture.
So, whether looking at an instant or traditional hot breakfast cereal, Nelson believes that many considerations formulators face when using grains in mixes "boil down to what kind of texture you're shooting for in the end or what your processing is internally: if you're adding flavors, if you're going through screw conveyers, issues like that." Though most hot cereals don't suffer much processing trauma, with equipment such as screw conveyers, product developers should expect some pre-packaging grain degradation that can affect the product's appearance.
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Grains are only a launching point for today's hot cereals. More value and uniqueness result when designers tap into the different sweetener and flavor choices. The main hot cereal flavors run toward the sweet, with exceptions in products like grits, where butter or cheese predominate, according to Paulette Lanzoff, director, flavor creation and application, Mane, U.S.A., Wayne, NJ. "The more popular flavors are in two categories: fruits or browns." The browns include notes such as cinnamon, maple, vanilla and their combinations. As for fruit flavors, product developers usually work with berries, apples and raisins. "I think that people tend to think of these products in terms of winter," Lanzoff says, "and the fruits available in winter seem to be the ones that go naturally with hot cereal: apple and some of the berries that are available dried or in jams and preserves."
Next, the flavors chosen must work under conditions common to hot cereal mixes. Fortunately, they don't go through the same processing rigors as their ready-to-eat (RTE) cousins, leaving most flavors safe from flashing off. "Hot cereals tend to be mixes," Lanzoff says, "and they tend to be made in a dry-mixing process, so the flavor doesn't really see that much in the way of processing."
Bearing this in mind, Lanzoff advises using spray-dried, powdered flavors. For crucial storage stability, "A starch and gum encapsulation of the flavor is enough to protect it throughout the shelf life," she says. An encapsulation system also can help protect flavors from microwaving's assaults, which can cause some less-stable notes to flash off.
Since spray-dried powders are usually quite fine, the tendency of dry mix ingredients to striate or settle out during storage can leave these lighter-weight powders resting at the top of the mix. To combat this, flavor chemists have developed multistage spray-dried flavors that undergo two or three post-drying steps that essentially agglomerate the powders. "By multistage spray-drying, we create a larger particle size that mixes better with the oats or grains, and doesn't separate out," says Lanzoff. Spray-drying through a single-stage dryer also subjects the flavor oils to a good deal of heat, and this removes many of the volatiles as well. She adds, "When we do our multistage drying, we don't drive as many of those volatiles off because we take it to a second stage to get it even drier where we dry it with air flow, as opposed to drying it with heat. We can use a lower temperature to drive off the rest of the moisture."
For certain highly volatile flavor notes that don't spray-dry well in a normal starch or gum-carrier system, encapsulation in substances such as beta-cyclodextrin provides an additional measure of stability. These can be used to create a profile with a higher impact of volatiles. Whether food designers want to use natural or artificial flavors is entirely up to them. Natural flavors often cost more than artificial and cannot always stand up to the rigors of processing as well an artificial. Nonetheless, given the mild processing that hot cereal mixes undergo, natural flavors often perform adequately. If product designers want their cereals to have a natural image - a common request in the healthful breakfast cereal arena - they had better use a natural flavor or a natural WONF, which consists of the natural base flavor and other natural flavors that intensify it.
The "homey" image of hot breakfast cereals might inspire formulators to use the same spices and flavors - such as ground cinnamon, cocoa powder or vanilla extract - in cereals that consumers have in their own cabinets. But how well do these items stand up? "You can use cinnamon, but, generally, you need something beyond that," Lanzoff says. "The mix is going to sit in the package, usually in pouches, for a while. So, generally, what we recommend in situations like that are combinations of, say, cinnamon plus cinnamon flavor to give it a boost and make it well-rounded." This dual-ingredient approach also benefits the cereal's appearance: the brown flecks of real cinnamon create an attractive visual effect. But ground cinnamon - unlike cinnamon flavor - will not dissolve readily in water. So, to get uniform flavor dispersion, formulators can use the spice and the flavor together.
For the most part, processors need not worry about flavor solubility in hot-cereal applications. "Generally, spray-dried flavors are water-soluble, so solubility is not a problem," Lanzoff says. Even if consumers choose to rehydrate their instant oatmeal mix with cream, because the oatmeal doesn't sit around a long time the flavor doesn't have a long time to migrate into the fat. What does often become an issue in hot cereal are the off-flavors contributed by vitamin and mineral fortification.
"Undesirable organoleptic effects can occur when fortification is too ambitious," says Jennyfer Reed, product development technologist, Watson Foods Co., Inc., West Haven, CT. "The B vitamins can offer grassy flavors, and minerals can be astringent and metallic." To most effectively cover unpleasant fortification flavors, certain masking flavors and flavor components can be used that blend well with flavors, and conceal some vitamin and mineral notes by adding a creaminess that will overcome the metallic taste, Lanzoff says. She also advises adding certain natural extracts that can "twist" the metallic taste, and cover fortification's bitterness. "We tend to do it with flavors like vanilla and cream, in conjunction with the product's named flavor." Even the grains themselves sometimes lend unwanted flavors to the cereal. "Oats can have a metallic taste of their own," Lanzoff says. "And most of the products out there have a named, or identity flavor with some cream notes or sweet vanilla notes in the background that help overcome some of that off-note."
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Sweeteners also play a crucial role in improving the taste of hot breakfast cereals. Considering that the cereals generally come in dry-mix form, formulators should opt for one of the many granulated sweeteners available. A dried form facilitates incorporation and clean-up, and cuts down on clumping or shelf-life problems that might arise with more hygroscopic choices. Indeed, product developers can choose not only standard granulated sweeteners, but flavored ones as well. Free-flowing, granulated blends combine sugar with other sweeteners or flavors, such as maple syrup, honey, peanut butter, raspberry, apple and molasses, to give a pleasing combination of sweetness and unique character in one easily applied ingredient. As an added benefit, the granules' quick dispersibility allows processors to mix them with other spices or dry ingredients like psyllium that otherwise would not disperse well.
Free-flowing dried-honey granules might prove most attractive to hot breakfast cereal makers because of honey's natural, healthful image. Though honey's flavor and sweetness intensity varies with its flower of origin, such differences often have little real effect, since processors usually blend various honeys to get a consistent sweetness and flavor.
Whether natural-product oriented processors use granulated honey, crystallized evaporated cane juice, dried fruit-juice concentrates, powdered malt extracts, or oat extracts (which add fiber and texture as well as sweetness), they still must declare them as sweeteners on the ingredients roster. So, if processors want to avoid having any sweetener in a prominent position on the ingredients list, they can cut back on the amount of sweetener used - and, concomitantly, on the formulation's price tag - by using honey, molasses or brown sugar flavors to help extend a smaller amount of sweetener. This option also sidetracks hygroscopicity issues or inconsistency problems.
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Beyond sweeteners and flavors, fruit add-ins really differentiate one hot cereal from the next. Air-dried, freeze-dried, and infused fruits - and a number of combinations thereof - will all work in hot cereal applications, according to Scott Summers, director, technical services, Tree Top Inc., Selah, WA. In fact, if a fruit works in an RTE, it will do so in a hot cereal as well. However, some choices work better than others.
Although some processors might want to use the more expensive freeze-dried fruits for their textural character, the cereal's equilibrium moisture level may negate freeze-drying's benefits. "You have to understand that the finished-product moisture has an impact on these hot cereal pouches," Summers says. "And if you're using low-moisture fruits like freeze-dried, you're paying for this textural characteristic at very low moistures. And our experience is that almost everything will equilibrate up at around 5% to 7% moisture, which kind of takes away the relative reason for using freeze-dried."
What about infusion? Fructose infusion changes a fruit's water-activity characteristics and behavior in virtually every kind of environment, Summers says. Infusion introduces humectants that bind water into the product, making it hard for most infused fruits to drop below 5% or 6% moisture. Additionally, many infused fruits that make their way into hot cereals undergo an air- or freeze-drying process following infusion, to remove excess moisture. To help forestall stickiness or clumping of infused berries, Summers recommends a coating process. The cranberries get a light coating of oil, and the blueberries are rolled in a kind of sugar. Even though infused fruits carry a lot of sweetness from the infusion process, they certainly can benefit from an extra dose of fruit flavor. What makes infused fruits different from air-dried lies mainly in color, texture and cost - since manufacturers buy by weight, the infusion liquid results in a higher price for the same volume of fruit.
So, given the choices, Summers and John Twomey, international sales manager, Tree Top, believe that, for hot cereal mixes, low-moisture apples work very well. In fact, many of the fruit chunks found in strawberry-, peach- or banana-flavored hot cereals are colored and flavored low-moisture apples. "Let's put it this way," Summers says. "If you've ever seen any fruit-flavored oatmeal supplied by the biggest oatmeal supplier, it is apple." The reliability of most apples moderates the fluctuations encountered in some of the more exotic fruits.
"Almost all these apple products go through a rolling process, which we call a flaking process," Summers says. "And what occurs is that there is a direct relationship between the thickness that the product is rolled to and how quickly it rehydrates." So, crushing the apple's cell structure enables the fruit to easily approximate the soft texture of a strawberry or peach.
Since fruit bits eventually end up mixed with other ingredients, product developers must consider moisture levels. "As far as water activities, all fruit pieces have to meet the 0.60 maximum for shelf stability," Summers says. Fortunately, dried-fruit pieces meet this goal easily, with most products in the range of 0.50 to 0.30 - often lower than the oats with which they share the pouch. When equilibration occurs, the other materials lose moisture to the apples, bringing the whole product to a lower moisture level. "You start at 0.10 water activity and you equilibrate up to 0.50," Summers explains.
A long shelf life owes itself not only to low water activities, but also to sulfiting of the fruit. No less than 95% of these dried fruits undergo treatment with sulfites to inhibit browning and microbial contamination. Since some consumers experience sensitivity reactions to sulfites, they must be labeled if the product's sulfite content exceeds 10 ppm as consumed. One consideration when combining sulfited fruits and fortification are possible reactions between sodium sulfite and iron in the fortification mix. "So we always recommend using complexed iron when you're using things that have sulfites in them," Summers advises.
Few things are more frustrating than finding that an apple-cinnamon oatmeal only has two piddling apple chunks in the whole packet. To avoid upsetting fruit-hungry customers, processors typically meter the fruit into the matrix on-stream, ensuring that each pouch satisfies points-of-identity constraints and gives consumers their fair share of fruit. "Over the years, we've looked at many projects that have been identified on size and number of pieces," Summers says. "You know, 'Is it better to have more small pieces or fewer big pieces?' But it all comes down to the perception of how much fruit you're actually getting." It turns out most processors decide to go with the more-small-pieces option.
Stratification of these fruit bits in cereals can pose a vexing problem, particularly in the case of hot infant cereal. Summers notes that some baby-cereal manufacturers using a drum-dried, powdered apple use a drum-dried rice of a similar consistency. Tree Top has had to develop very stringent bulk density specifications for the drum-dried apple so that stratification doesn't occur. Tricalcium phosphate, a common anti-caking agent in baby foods, also helps.
While consumers want convenient preparation, they also want to eat foods that are good for them - including fruits. But dried fruits experience a good deal of processing before they make it to the cereals, which can have a deleterious effect on the pieces' nutritional punch. "One of the good things about drying fruit is that when you dry a piece of fruit, you blow a little bit of the nutritional benefits off, but you essentially concentrate what's left by removing water," Summers explains. "And when you get down to an analysis base of milligrams or grams per hundred grams in its dried, consumer-ready form, the nutritional count can really be quite high."
The drying process also takes its toll on the fruit's flavor. As Summers points out, "It's very difficult to carry all the fruit flavor in the fruit, if not impossible," so processors will often flavor, and sometimes color, dried fruit bits. In this case, the flavoring choices can really enhance the finished product's quality. For instance, using flavored fruit bits in addition to the flavor added throughout the whole matrix gives consumers a burst when they bite into the fruit pieces and that complements the general flavor of the cereal as well.
Click here to read Warming Up to Hot Breakfast Cereals - Part Two.
• Photo: Quaker Oats Company
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