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Why Emulsify? The art of nutritious bread making
by Bente Simonsen, Bakery Application Specialist, DuPont Nutrition & Health
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heat flour is the main ingredient in yeast-raised bread, and its quality in relation to baking depends very much on the wheat variety, climate and growth conditions. Two factors are of high importance for bread production. 1) The tolerance towards flour variations and production variations as well as improved volume. 2) The freshness and softness of the final baked bread as well as improved shelf life. Softness is usually used to judge the freshness and, consequently, the quality of bread. The bread producer is therefore interested in keeping bread soft for as long as possible. Emulsifiers are the solutions for these challenges – DATEM and Distilled Monoglycerides. The benefits and effects of these two emulsifiers in bread making include tolerance towards flour variations and production variations as well as improved volume.
Tolerance towards flour quality
The use of Panodan® DATEM improves dough tolerance, helping bakers to overcome fluctuations in flour quality and produce bread of a better and more consistent quality. By way of example, the effect of our product on a weak flour type and a medium flour type is illustrated in figure 1. This figure shows that Panodan® DATEM has a significant impact on weak flour in particular, making it possible to upgrade the flour to a medium or high quality type. Where the optimal dosage is used, bread quality is not affected by variations in flour quality. The effect of Panodan® DATEM is expressed by measuring the specific volume of crusty rolls made from the two types of flour.
Tolerance towards baking process
Panodan® DATEM improves the development of the gluten network in dough, producing a dough which is more tolerant to the whole baking procedure. 46 | February 2017 - Milling and Grain
Improved hydration of the gluten reduces problems encountered during mixing. Over-mixing is better tolerated as the wellhydrated and homogeneous gluten network is better able to withstand the excessive energy input without rupturing. In the later processing stages, the improved gluten structure provides better tolerance to prolonged resting and, especially, proofing times. (figure 2).
The final baked bread
Due to the excellent dough-strengthening effect and improvement of dough-handling properties, Panodan® DATEM produces bread with an attractive, thin crust, which remains crisp for a longer period. It increases the volume of the final bread which also produces a pleasant, light texture for better eating properties.
The mechanics behind it
The unique effect of Panodan® DATEM is due to the structure of Panodan® DATEM as it is an emulsifier molecule with a high hydrophilic/lipophilic balance. This means it is a highly ionic emulsifier. The addition of Panodan® DATEM to a wheat dough will improve the interaction between the various layers of different polarity in the dough and provide a more flexible, tolerant dough. This effect is demonstrated in figure 3. In figure 3A the gluten strands are inflexible and will break when the pressure from the carbon dioxide increases, whereas the addition of Panodan® DATEM makes gluten strands flexible and easy to stretch, resulting in improved carbon dioxide retention within the dough, as shown in figure 3B. Figure 4 shows the effect of Panodan® DATEM in a dough system, as illustrated using confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM), where 4A is a dough system without DATEM and 4B is a dough system with DATEM. This clearly demonstrates that the use of Panodan® DATEM results in a more homogeneous and less fragmented gluten network compared to the control system. For