Feast for the Eyes - Part Two

Click here to read Feast for the Eyes - Part One.

Timeliness
No Half-Baked Ideas
Fluid Assets
Just Desserts

Products must have the same visual effects on a prospective customer three months into the deep freeze as they do prepared the first morning of a consumer test. How does the designer ensure the product can perform after storage? Selection of materials, functional ingredients, manufacturing techniques and shelf-life testing must be completed to make sure that a chicken breast warms up nicely in a microwave, still moist and golden brown. The potatoes and onions should not be mushy, and the asparagus must possess texture and color. The sauces have to retain particulates and shine. Of course, the look must not cover up poor taste and texture.

Proper cooking of the meat and vegetables must be taken to the degree required to supply microbial safety, while giving the desired finished cooked appearance of the components after thawing and final thermal or microwave cooking. Juiciness can be maintained with marinades, glazes and sauces, which incorporate phosphates, modified starches and stabilizers to control moisture loss and dry appearance.

In the initial processing, quick-freezing techniques can help maintain cell-wall structure, particularly in vegetables. If ice crystals are allowed to form slowly, they tend to increase in size and rupture the cell walls, releasing cellular liquids. Smaller crystals formed during quick freezing cause less damage, and can help promote a firmer-looking, less watery product. Maintaining constant temperature during storage also lessens the tendency for ice crystals to form on the product surface.

No half-baked ideas

Baked goods represent a large category of products with multiple requirements for visual appeal. These shapely products must look good inside as well as out. "Hearth breads are exploding, as are finished goods and frozen dough products," says Mark Lindsley, team director, R&D, Bunge Foods, Mexico, MO. "The forms alone are appealing, such as Scandinavian, French and Baltic cuts. The slices in the surface of a baguette, or a wheat stalk pattern cut into a French bread, signify the type and style of the bread. Toppings, including excess flour on the surface during proofing, add to the appeal. Steaming provides shine in proofing. Heavy particulates such as herbs and spices lend appeal. Sun-dried tomatoes and rosemary needles on the surface hint of what's within the loaf."

No longer lingering on the shelves as white slabs of polystyrene foam, breads and rolls now assume the greater role of making center-aisle statements of bold texture and color. The colors of pale to darkest black breads, colored with caramel colors, molasses or dark cocoa often have a glistening glaze to yield sheen, and also to hold savory seeds, from dill to poppy. It's open season for sesame, sunflower and steel-cut oats to adorn your bread designs. And not only the surface gets into the act: Herbs, olives and sun-dried tomatoes also can enliven dough composition.

Crust plays a great role in bread's visual appeal, especially the degree of browning. Crust browning involves two sets of reactions: caramelization and Maillard reactions. The colors produced under caramelization involve sugars changing from clear to straw yellow colorto dark brown with caramel flavor notes, to burned black colors with bitter tastes. Maillard reactions occur between reducing sugars, such as dextrose, and the free amino groups of amino acids, peptides and proteins in the dough. The compounds resulting from Maillard reactions depend on many factors: heating time and temperature, percent moisture, pH and sugar type. The final reaction stage forms insoluble brown polymers, called melanoidans, that provide a range of appealing shades, especially on the ridges, cuts and other surface features.

Hard wheat, used for bread flours, contains about 13% protein, which yields a more elastic dough. Bread flours are high in gluten, the protein that assists doughs in retaining carbon dioxide and other leavening gases during rising.

"During mixing, lecithin first helps to hydrate the flour," says Karen Allen Seabolt, associate scientist, Central Soya Company, Inc., Ft. Wayne, IN. "It also helps to increase the number of chemical bonds between adjacent protein strands, so that you get a stronger, more intricate gluten matrix." The bread thus has increased volume. Therefore, interesting or familiar patterns of tearing and cracking can form on the surface, developing textural appearance. These patterns may brown differently from the rest of the crust or loaf. Other dough conditioners that are water-dispersible can have the same effect, such as sodium stearoyl lactylate and DATEM.

Fluid assets

Visual appeal of beverages involves the entire product, from container, cap and wrap, to the main attraction - that glistening liquid that promises refreshment from the first taste. Depending on the package, the product itself can make a bold statement, if it's visible in its glass or PET package. The package itself makes a declaration, and glass has long had a premium image due to its heft, lack of off-flavors and clarity. The drawbacks, of course, are weight, breakage and cost, but glass still carries currency in premium products from distilled hard to sparkling soft drinks.

Whether or not visible in the container, when that cool liquid fills the glass, it had better shout "refreshment!" This term is known to all, but it has many facets. A beverage has to be "wet," but it also often has to have some apparent body, indicating refreshment. With low-calorie beverages, the opposite is often true - consumers desiring low-calorie beverages don't expect to see indications of syrupiness. A juice would be expected to have body, plus possibly pulp bits, cloud, natural fruit-color tones and, perhaps, some frothiness when poured, due to protein and pulp components.

Many new beverage varieties have been developed during the last decade, with fruit-juice beverages becoming quite popular during this time span as well. Juice beverages contain less than 100% juice, and must often be designed to appear as either 100% juice or a juice blend. This is advantageous for consumers, as higher levels of vitamin, mineral and fiber and phytochemicals can be formulated into a product. Calories can be cut by using fructose or blends with high-intensity sweeteners, including aspartame and acesulfame K. Juices contain colors and pulp. They also often possess cloudiness or opacity, as well as body or apparent viscosity and/or mouthfeel. Matching those attributes, or accentuating other features, requires modifications.

Suppose the intended design is dubbed "Sunset Blush," a 25%-juice, ripe-peach product with rose tones of red raspberry. Ingredients contributing to appearance would be peach and raspberry concentrates dissolved in purified water. Perhaps lesser amounts of red grape juice or other colored or clear juice concentrates can be blended to provide the 25% juice base. That juice level would provide only part of the color. Appropriate for this application would be either FD&C dyes, such as Red #40 and Yellow #6, or naturally derived colors such as acid-stabilized carmine and water-dispersible ß-carotene emulsion. The naturally derived colors cannot be labeled "natural," unless they are part of the named fruits.

The carmine colors are water-soluble, displaying stable magenta-red colors at a pH as low as 3.0, but they will precipitate below pH 2.5. The heat and light stability are good to excellent. The ß-carotene emulsions provide yellow-orange colors, are stable at pH 3.0 (with stability dropping at pH 2.5), and possess good light and heat stability. FD&C Red #40 has good stability to light and pH changes and a red-orange color. Yellow #6 is orange, with moderate light stability and good pH stability. Lighter yellow shades can be obtained from FD&C Yellow #5, with similar stability characteristics to Yellow #6.

Clear juice beverages would be filtered after blending and prior to pasteurizing. Juice pulp can be supplemented with other fruit pulps to raise the visual impact. The products can be designed as a "natural"-style drink, with pulp settling to the bottom. However, nonsettling beverages containing insoluble particulates require a suspending agent such as xanthan gum, which is acid-stable down to pH 2.0. This gum supplies some viscosity at very low levels, and levels above 0.1% could be quite viscous, depending on the pulps and other ingredients. A synergistic effect on viscosity can be achieved by combining xanthan and guar or locust bean gums, for example.

Processing methods must be factored in, as pasteurization can affect color and eventual shelf life. Oxygen is detrimental toward juice colors. In fact, color changes indicate flavor changes. As browning appears in, say, an orange juice, it indicates quality loss. Mechanical deaeration prior to pasteurization is the best method of maintaining color in juice beverages. Tetra Pak, Chicago, has an in-line deaerator that physically separates the air from the beverages prior to pasteurization. Extended holding times, excessive recycling, extended cool-down and storage times of filled beverages at elevated temperatures must be minimized. These factors drastically affect product quality, including color. Removal of headspace oxygen with steam at the capping stage of a hot-fill bottling system can help to preserve the colors in storage. Ascorbic acid addition can help reduce residual oxygen in the beverage product.

These processing considerations apply equally to teas. The golden-brown brews, and even the emerald of green teas, represent another area of decided appeal. Multihued teas, containing many botanical ingredients, colors, clarity or cloud, not only look appealing iced in summer, or steaming in winter, but might indicate apparent value. The polyphenols of teas, the mixtures of colorful anthocyanins from fruits, and the shades and opacities of botanicals comprise the center of investigation for healthful attributes. It might be that colors draw our eyes for that very healthful, functional purpose.

Just desserts

Who could walk past a dessert case in a deli without even glancing at the displays of colorful products? Formulating for the refrigerated or freezer case requires designing into the products properties that retain their appearance and appeal after three or more months in a freezer torture chamber. The look must be as fresh as though the cake had been prepared early in the morning - not an easy accomplishment.

The first step is choosing a soft flour (typically less than 8.5% protein) to create the correct crumb texture. Other ingredients contribute to this characteristic texture, including eggs and emulsifiers. "With lecithin, you usually get a more consistent crumb in cakes, which is less dense due to thinner cell walls," Seabolt says. "It's able to retain more of the leavening gases, but it can act as a tenderizing agent. There is an interface between the lipid, which is higher in cakes, and the air entrapped during mixing. That forms spaces where the leavening gases can enter and expand. Then the set structure of the cake ends up being the starch. That happens during baking when the starch gelatinizes. A continuous structure is formed, but it's actually an open structure. It won't retain gas after baking." The higher fat level in cakes can be emulsified with lecithin. This forms thin cell walls, which also can interact with air and carbon dioxide during mixing and leavening, leading to soft, pliable batters. The cake batter expands into a porous structure that on baking, retains a spongy, continuous three-dimensional network consisting of protein and gelatinized starch. The crumb's strength, fine structure and lightness is compressible, and retains its softness longer.

"Lecithin, especially hydrophilic-modified lecithin with distilled monoglycerides, helps to retain moisture in cakes," Seabolt says. One type has the lecithin and monoglyceride associated on a molecular basis for moisture retention. The cake will have a less firm texture after thawing; this appears less dry on cutting. Instant, or pregelatinized, modified starches also increase moisture retention and freeze/thaw stability of cakes. Adding lecithin also increases edge height and center height, due to increased cake volume. The cake's crumb structure is improved, with fewer large, open cells in the rising batter. This structure leads to less fall, providing greater center height and a desirable rounded appearance. The increased volume translates to better compressibility, and cake firmness with lecithin is lower after storage. The surface-active properties of lecithin allow easier release from the pan, and surface cracking is reduced.

Designing a cake requires several considerations affecting the product's appeal. For example, take a banana bundt cake, with banana bits and orange bits inside and appearing at the top, the top bejeweled with small mandarin orange pieces and finished with swirls of Madeira yellow-orange and banana yellow-colored drizzle icings.

Gum stabilizers help suspend the fruit bits throughout the cake's interior, and allow pieces to protrude through the surface. Glacéed mandarin orange sections and icing swirls are added after the cake cools. The surface must retain a shiny appearance and a moist look, which can be added with an apricot glaze, formulated with waxy maize-based starches or dextrins for good adhesion, transparency and sheen.

"In designing breakfast breads and other baked goods, we are doing much systems modeling to reduce development times," Lindsley says. "Combining those techniques with instrumental methods allows us to narrow the field of tests required to obtain results. We have Thermotron chambers for accelerated freeze/thaw tests of products. Integral probes allow tracking of external humidity and internal product water and oil migration. We can do magnetic resonance imaging to show oil dropping out of a cake. We have near-infrared spectral capability for determining consistency through a product cross section." "Formulating a cake for manufacturing, which must undergo freeze/thaw cycling in storage, requires proper emulsifiers for anti-staling, and stabilizers - like carrageenan, microcrystalline cellulose and cellulose gums - to prevent water migration," Lindsley explains. Retarding staling and preventing water migration provides an evenly moist-appearing cake on cutting. "Cakes formulated for 25-day ambient storage must be richer, requiring more oil and gums." A moist and glossy appearance is provided by the oils, emulsifiers and stabilizers.

The frosting on the cake is the finishing touch of the design, but it is also integral to the quality and appearance of the finished product. Frostings might provide a moisture barrier to maintain the fresh appearance longer. The frosting plays a part in moisture migration. "It must be moister-appearing, though not moister. Water activity control is critical," says Lindsley. Water activity is reduced by the sugar levels, dissolved and suspended in fine crystalline form in the frosting with gums. The excess moisture in the frosting must be controlled with gums like xanthan to prevent migration into the cake or loss to drying. Additional fibers like microcrystalline cellulose help to prevent water migration.

"Ring cake and Danish icings use a high-sugars mix with stabilizers like hydroxypropyl methylcellulose," says Lindsley. "The hydroxypropyl methylcellulose (HPMC) provides hot viscosity for icing application to the product. These can be added via a waterfall coater to the hot product, the icings setting quickly with little water migration into the product. String glazes for drizzling on products can contain an emulsifier to prevent drying." The HPMC helps prevent syneresis.

Icings basically can be of three types: flat, or non-aerated, as used for coffee cakes or Danish; partially aerated; and aerated, foam-type icings. Flat icings are prepared with sugars, water, stabilizers such as HPMC, salt, color and flavor. The stabilizer maintains a balance between dissolved and suspended sugars by controlling crystal growth of the suspended sugar, maintaining a smooth, creamy blend with a low-gloss finish. The icings can be colored with very fine-grained, FD&C lake dispersions. Lakes, which are FD&C dyes adsorbed on alumina hydrate particles, reduce color bleeding in the moisture-controlled environment of an icing. Their light stability is better than straight dyes. Lakes require thorough blending into the icing during mixing to evenly color with no streaks or specks. The actual tone achieved can depend more on the particle size of the lake than the actual dye content; a smaller particle thoroughly dispersed results in a more intense color.

Buttercream icings are used for cakes, as they provide more luster and a glossier appearance. Ingredients might include powdered sugar, emulsifiers, shortening, nonfat dry milk, salt, water, butter, gums, FD&C lakes, cocoa and other coloring additives. Egg whites or yolks also can be added. The batch is mixed at medium speed to reach a degree of aeration that provides the visual frothiness, lightness and creamy appearance desired. Lake levels are chosen to provide the shading required. The more air incorporated, the lighter the color at a constant dye concentration.

The tantalizing search for visual appeal in product design involves capturing or creating the essence of an appearance denoting perceived quality, identification with stored dining memories and total sensory stimulation on the part of the consumer. Putting together all the obvious and subtle elements of the visual presentation is the design team's triumph.

• Photo: Cherry Marketing Board

• Photo: FIS

Weeks Publishing Company
3400 Dundee Rd. Suite #100
Northbrook, IL 60062
Phone: 847-559-0385
Fax: 847-559-0389

Feast for the Eyes - Part Two

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