DuPont Expert Panel Identifies Sensory Parameters for Bread Crispness

07 Oct 2014 --- DuPont Nutrition & Health has cracked the code to longer lasting crispness in bake-off bread with a flexible collection of ingredients. Evaluation by the DuPont sensory panel ensures the crispy crusts satisfy the preferences of international consumers.

Enjoyed for its fresh-from-the-oven taste and convenience, bake-off bread continues to grow in popularity. But its crisp shelf life is notoriously short, the crust rapidly becoming soft and leathery after baking.

The DuPont Danisco ingredients range offers solutions to optimise the crisp shelf life of frozen, par-baked baguettes and rolls after the final baking.

POWERBake 4000 Bakery Enzyme is a core ingredient in each solution. Crispness can be finely tuned by selecting from a range of emulsifiers, including SOLEC SF-D Lecithin and PANODAN DATEM A2020, and the hydrocolloid GRINDSTED CMC.

“Regional preferences differ on crispness, with consumers have varying expectations of the bite quality, chewing time and texture, for example, when they eat bakery products,” says Stine Moeller, senior scientist and sensory lab manager at DuPont Nutrition & Health in Braband, Denmark.

“The most successful bakers are those who are best able to satisfy these preferences.”

DuPont draws on its trained panel of sensory experts to make objective evaluations of bake-off crispness. The panel is an essential measuring tool that takes over where laboratory analyses leave off.

“Despite everything that modern technology can offer, human senses are still indispensable to making a meaningful evaluation of the appearance, taste, smell, feel and sound of a food sample,” Moeller explains.

Calibration of the panellists prior to each evaluation session establishes a common frame of reference for scoring sensory parameters on a pre-defined scale. This enables DuPont to validate the capacity of ingredient solutions to provide exactly the right kind of crispness for a given market.