There is a growing trend in the baking industry of using enzymes to optimize end product quality or reformulate for clean label purposes. The functionality of these ingredients vary widely and although enzymes are relatively new to the baking world, they are in fact all around us in everyday life.
What are enzymes, and how are they used to improve product quality with the bakery.
Enzymes are naturally occurring proteins found in a wide variety of sources such as fungi, bacteria, animals and plants. They are an important part of everyday life as they facilitate particular functions in the human body such as digestion of starch by amylases, and the breakdown of proteins with proteases which can then be absorbed into the body.
Every enzyme has a specific biochemical action within the host, and it is those key functionalities that are they key to providing benefits to the baker.
Why use Enzymes within the baking process?
Enzymes can be used at very low dosages (parts per million) and have an impressive impact on dough processability and subsequently end-product quality.
Packaged in dry or liquid form for easy use within the plant, enzyme preparations can be made up of a single enzyme or in some cases a combination to provide a complete alterative to currently used improver formulations, giving improvements in areas such as:
Modification of dough strength by increasing/decreasing elasticity.
Anti-Staling will improve crumb softness
Plant Processing by reducing mixing time or improving machinability.
Production of beneficial ingredients by interaction of enzyme with minor components in flour.
Care must be taken to ensure the enzymes are added at the correct point within the manufacturing process and at the required level to produce the desired effect. Enzyme effectiveness can be influenced by several external factors such as:
Dough temperature – Most enzymes are stable up to 600C and will double their activity every 100C increase in temperature (Alpha Amylase as an exception being active up to 850C.
Substrate – Enzymes are highly specific in their actions and must be in contact with the substrate for the reaction to occur.
Enzyme activity is PH dependent, with a specific PH value for maximum activity. Typically, dough PH ranges from 5 – 6 which is well within the range found in most doughs.
Concentration of both the enzyme and the substrate impact on the rate of reaction.
A higher concentration of enzyme will increase the reaction rate, while the amount of time the enzyme and substrate are together directly affects the extent of reaction.
How C-Cell can help
C-Cell is an analyser used globally in the baking industry to assess end product quality of baked goods. C-Cell can be used at the end of the production process, in which a slice of product such as bread, can be placed into the analyser, an image is then taken and analysed for over 50 different parameters.
C-Cell analyses of internal crumb structure
Characteristics that C-Cell looks for include, shape and size, internal structure, crumb structure, external features. Using the statistics produced by C-Cell, production processes can be adjusted, ingredients can be added or changed in order to get more return on investment while maintaining end product quality.
Traditionally, subjective sensory assessment was used to identify the quality of a product, which can result in end product quality for the consumer varying drastically depending on what sensory team are working – as subjective assessment is all down to human interpretation.
With C-Cell, sensory assessment errors are eliminated, and features can be accurately measured which are usually invisible to the naked human eye. This is particularly important when using enzymes during baking processes, as enzymes can be costly, because usage levels are low. By monitoring the exact statistical changes in increasing and decreasing very small quantities of enzyme, can ensure no more enzyme is used and wasted more than needed without compromising end product quality.
For more information on how C-Cell can help put statistics on improvers and enzymes - please contact us on info@bakingqualityanalyser.com or 01925 860 401