To
bake your bread
Bakery
products can become one of the ready solutions to utilise the surplus
wheat produced in the country, says DC Saxena
Bakery
products in India have become increasingly popular due to an increased
demand for convenience foods. Among bakery products, bread is the most
popular processed ready-to-eat product in the country and there is an
unlimited scope for it’s expansion within the bakery industry in the
country. This would also help in the effective utilisation of the surplus
wheat produced in India and make available a nutritious ready-to-eat
convenient product at a reasonable cost affordable to the common man,
which by definition is a big chunk of the pie that the bakery industry
can target.
The
demand for bakery products is bound to increase further in the country
due to an increasing demand for convenience products, shift in eating
habits and better transportation and distribution methods.
Bakery
products can become one of the ready solutions to utilise the surplus
wheat produced in the country. This calls for their popularisation among
different cross sections of the population. This would necessitate
solving some of the major problems faced by the baking industry in respect
of quality of raw materials, improvement of end products through quality
control of raw materials, adoption of appropriate processing technologies,
introduction of new bakery items to suit different life styles and reduction
in the cost of bakery products for ready consumption by all sections
of the population.
Recent
developments
Quality
of raw materials
Refined
wheat flour or maida is the main raw material for the preparation of
bakery products. The quality of maida used greatly influences the quality
of the final product. The flour used should have a high protein content
(11-12 per cent), low ash (0.5 per cent), high sedimentation value (30
to 40 ml) and high water absorption (60- 65 per cent). It is well known
that most of the wheat grown in the country belongs to the medium strong
type. Thus, the flour milled is naturally low in protein content, making
it less suitable for bread making. The protein content in commercial
flour is reported to range from 7-11
per cent.
Categorisation
of wheat
Some
of the wheat grown in the country has been found to have good bread
making potential. However, such type is not made available to the mills
for processing into maida as wheat is not graded and categorised according
to its functional characteristics and stored separately. This development
has yet to take place in India.
Air
classification
It
is possible to classify wheat flour into low protein or high protein
fractions by air classification. The variation in protein content in
flour particles of different sizes is taken to classify the products
possessing high or low protein content. The flour with particle size
less than 17 m normally contains twice the amount of proteins present
in the parent flour, while the fraction ranging in size from 17-40 m
has half the protein content of the normal flour. The size separation
of flour is done by adopting the air classification technique after
grinding the flour in a pin mill. Yield and protein content of air
classified fractions of flour are given in Table 1.
Use
of flour improvers
The
quality of flour used in bread making can also be improved by using
bleaching and maturing agents. Though in other countries flours are
normally treated with improvers depending on the end use, it is not
being done in India yet.
There
are several improvers available like potassium bromate, benzoyl peroxide,
ascorbic acid, chlorine, chlorine dioxide and azodicarbonamide. However
in India, millers are only permitted to use benzoyl peroxide as a bleaching
agent and ascorbic acid and potassium bromate as maturing agents under
the Prevention of Food Adulteration Act.
Use
of yeast
The
quality of yeast also influences the quality of bakery products. In
India, two types of yeast – compressed and dry – are available. Both
have their advantages as well as disadvantages. A new type of yeast
known as instant yeast has been developed in the US and nowadays over
60 per cent of the baking companies are using this yeast. It has several
advantages over the existing compressed or dry yeast. For example, no
refrigeration is required during storage and it ensures instant reactivation
in the dough.
Sugar
tolerant yeast is also available in India, which is found very useful
for the production of sweet bread.
Latest
innovations
There
are different methods of bread making such as straight dough, sponge
and dough, delayed salt, liquid ferment and no-time dough. Different
methods are followed in various countries and the method used depends
mostly on the consumer preference and the type of wheat available in
that country.
All
these methods have certain advantages and disadvantages. No-time dough
development method requires less time for the preparation of bread,
as the dough is not subjected to fermentation of any kind.
Recently,
a new method requiring just 15 per cent of the energy consumed in the
mechanical dough development method has been reported. This method
is known as dough development by rollers wherein the mixed dough is
developed by passing the dough through sheeters. The bread obtained
with this method is found to be comparable in quality with the no-time
dough method and the method is found to be more suitable for preparing
bread from composite flours.
.....CONTD
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