Mühlenchemie Creates Solution for Efficient Baking Without Guar

Mühlenchemie has developed EMCEbest WA as an alternative to guar gum powder – the new product ensures optimum water binding, stability and freshness in bread baking – a variant also permits “clean label” formulations.

7 Jun 2012 --- Because of the rising price and declining availability of guar gum powder, the baking industry is seeking alternatives to this raw material. This has led the flour improvement specialist Mühlenchemie to develop a new combination of active enzymatic ingredients. In the production of bread and bread rolls EMCEbest WA serves as an efficient replacement for guar gum powder for water absorption; it also ensures better stability of the dough during preparation and over four percent greater baked volume than guar gum powder. The variant EMCEbest WA Pure also makes it possible to offer “clean label” products, since the enzymatic ingredients in this composition do not require E numbers.

Guar gum powder is the best known and most widely used hydrocolloid in the food industry. One of the main reasons for the success of this raw material is that it used to be fairly cheap. But the demand for guar is currently rising by leaps and bounds because of its increasing use in oil and natural gas production. To make manufacturers of bakery products less dependent on the supply of guar gum, Mühlenchemie’s applications technologists have now developed an additive that can be used as an economical and nevertheless high-quality alternative in the production of bread and rolls. In extensive tests a solution was found in the form of a combination of vegetable fibres, hydrocolloids and enzymes that achieves much better stability in the Farinogram than guar gum powder at the same amount. Moreover, the new EMCEbest WA ensures pleasantly dry doughs immediately after preparation and needs no additional swelling time. Furthermore, baking trials with a usage level of one percent (flour basis) resulted in an increase in volume of over four percent compared to guar gum powder with normal proofing and over-proofing.

For companies that wish to do without additives that have to be declared, Mühlenchemie offers the variant EMCEbest WA Pure. With the use of one percent EMCEbest WA Pure (flour basis), six to ten percent more water can be added that without additives, depending on the formulation. The doughs are easy to process nevertheless, and do not become sticky. The Texture Analyser shows the resulting moistness as softness and elasticity of the crumb, which has an even texture. Products made with EMCEbest WA Pure also have up to four percent more volume than with guar gum powder.

These positive effects were confirmed with both directly processed and over-fermented doughs for bread, rolls and baguettes, and also with heavy doughs for products containing dried fruit. EMCEbest WA Pure is therefore the ideal ingredient for ensuring stability, high volume yield, freshness and economy in the industrial production of goods from “clean label” recipes.