Cereals processing technology

Breadmaking 227
10.9.2 Mixing and processing technologies
Dough mixing and processing remain as the critical steps in the breadmaking
process. Improvements in knowledge regarding the mechanisms by which gas
bubbles are incorporated and stabilized in the dough will help in the
understanding of the role of the contribution that dough mixing makes to these
fundamental issues. Some of the most recent work in this area has started to link
gas bubble structures with wheat variety and the energy required to achieve
‘optimum’ dough development . Other related work has linked dough rheology
ex-mixer with the subsequent processing stages which convert the bulk dough
into unit pieces ready for proof and baking. Much work on dough processing
methods remains to be done but already changes in dough moulding processes
are being implemented.
Attempts have been made to run provers commercially at higher
temperatures. Higher proof temperatures will warm the dough more quickly,
but a steeper temperature gradient through the dough will certainly have an
effect on product quality, because it will result in uneven gas production rates
and, ultimately, uneven cell structure and texture in the finished loaf. To raise
dough throughput rates through prover and oven requires improved understanding
of both processes. The application of X-ray tomography using CTscanners
is beginning to provide data which will enable such processing changes
(Whitworth and Alava, 1999).
Bread baking remains to some degree an art or craft rather than a science or
technology. This is especially true in the areas of process control and quality
optimisation which still rely heavily on the ‘expert’ baker to make the necessary
adjustments to the combination of raw materials, formula and process. While many
bakeries are now highly automated in the engineering sense most are still relatively
primitively controlled in the product quality sense. The application of computerbased
technologies has started to be applied to baking processes (Young, 1998) but
the potential has still to be fully exploited. In part this is because large parts of the
necessary knowledge have still to gathered and structured in a suitable format for
use. A start has been made but much more remains to be done.
10.9.3 Product trends
The major challenges for the products of bread bakers have always been the
same; namely how to preserve those special ‘just-baked’ qualities of aroma,
taste and texture. In the past this limited the scale of production to the local
community but as time has gone by the move has been to more widespread
geographical distribution networks and extended shelf life. The factors which
limit bread shelf life are well understood (Pateras, 1998) and extensions of
product shelf life have been achieved through the application of suitable antistaling
strategies. In the UK the shelf life of some bread products has been
doubled though at the cost of adding anti-microbial agents.
Consumer demands for more diverse bread products continue to increase and
today the typical bakery shop or in-store bakery offers a wider range of goods