I N G R E D I E N T
BAKERY REVIEW
Emulsifiers in Baked Goods T he use of food additives is necessary to maintain the quality and freshness of the food product. Food additives perform important functions in baked goods such as starch complexing, protein strengthening and aeration and may also offer some degree of emulsification. Baked goods without emulsifiers are tough, dry, leathery, stale and tasteless. “An emulsion is a dispersion of small droplets of one immiscible liquid within another.” Emulsifiers keep the droplets from coalescing. Let us understand in detail about the emulsifiers, what they are and what they exactly do. Emulsifiers are chemical products that facilitate the uniform mixing of two immiscible substances or two immiscible mediums. These mediums in different combinations could be: • Liquid and Liquid • Liquid and Gas • Liquid and Solid Emulsifiers are amphiphilic substances i.e. having a lipophilic portion and a hydrophilic part. The lipophilic part is a long chain fatty acid. The hydrophilic part is either non-ionic (e.g. glycerol, propylene glycol, sorbitol, sucrose) or ionic negatively charged (such as lactic
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acid, acetic, citric acid). Emulsifiers that are soluble in oil, favour water in oil emulsion (w/o) and water soluble emulsifiers favour oil in water (o/w) emulsion. Example of w/o emulsion are margarines and butter icing. Examples of o/w emulsions are milk, mayonnaise and ice-creams.
Yeast Raised Products Emulsifiers have two major functions in Yeast raised products: • Dough conditioning/strengthening • Shelf life extension/crumb softening Dough conditioners/strengtheners (protein interaction) During the formation of dough, a protein network is formed by gluten. If the gluten is of poor quality or is weakened during
processing, the gas produced by the yeast will escape through the weak sections of the gluten film. So as a result, the part of this gluten matrix will collapse. Emulsifiers function as dough conditioners by improving the binding of wheat flour gluten strands to each other. Dough strengtheners increase the amount of binding sites that gluten strands have to each other and/or form bridges to supplement disulfide linkages which result in a stronger gluten film. This leads to an enhanced loaf volume and a better texture of breads. But, this mechanism is not fully understood. Dough conditioners provide the following benefits: • Compensation for variation in raw materials (e.g. flour quality) • Improved dough machinability by gluten complexing. • Greater tolerance to production abuse of dough by providing drier, less sticky dough. This reduces the tearing and facilitates processing. • Ease of formulating low fat products, reduction in shortening or oil with no loss of volume, tenderness, or slicing ease. • Increased gas retention, resulting in lower yeast requirements, improves oven spring, shorter proof times, and increased volume.
Oct-Nov ’21
