Bolstering the Bakery Aisle

The bakery segment faces challenges. From changing dietary habits to finding alternatives for bakery products, bakers know that they cannot rest on their laurels and are innovating to address the changing preferences of consumers. This means creating more bite-sized baked goods or convenient take-and-go products that can be eaten across dayparts. There are also more gluten-free bakery products along with those enriched with more protein, formulated with healthier fats, or made with less added sugar.

Moving beyond traditional flavors and formats is also generating interest. For example, doughnuts with nontraditional fillings like liqueur or Earl Grey–flavored cream is in the top 30 of more than 100 trends for 2017 noted by the National Restaurant Assoc. (NRA 2016). And finally, grains of all types are increasingly finding their way into everything from cookies to croissants, where they add unique flavors and textures as well as boosting the nutrient content.

As industrial and artisanal bakers innovate, formulation challenges often pop up. That’s where ingredient manufacturers come in. Whether it’s an issue with shelf life, texture, clean label, or replacing partially hydrogenated oils (PHOs), they offer solutions for these challenges and more.

New Shortenings Improve Functionalities
Shortenings are not one-size-fits-all when it comes to bakery applications. Shortenings in the Regal line from Cargill, Minneapolis, Minn. (cargill.com), are formulated to meet the requirements of specific bakery products.

Each of the five shortenings that the company unveiled at the 2016 International Bakery Innovation Expo (IBIE) held in Las Vegas, Nev., last October, has its own features and benefits for such applications as icing, doughnuts, and puff pastry. “We took a long look at our line of bakery products, and from a Cargill perspective we really thought that we weren’t optimally serving the bakery industry,” says Janet Bones, vice president of R&D for Cargill’s Global Edible Oil Solutions. The release of the Regal line of shortenings is the company’s first step in offering a comprehensive line of high-performance bakery ingredients, she adds.

The development of Regal Icing Shortening NH involved optimizing the crystalline structure to deliver an improved texture with reduced post-hardening over shelf life and an improved rich mouthfeel, says Bones. The shortening, which is a blend of palm oil, high stability canola oil, monoglycerides and diglycerides, and polysorbate 60, does not contain hydrogenated fats. The technology behind developing this shortening is patent-pending. Another shortening created for the formulation of icing also functions in cakes. Regal Cake & Icing Shortening is a non-palm shortening with a broader plasticity range and improved creaming properties. Another reported feature of the shortening is that it produces uniform fat crystals at a wider temperature range; this means that the cake and icing will experience less post-hardening over the shelf life. Since it does not contain palm oil, the shortening has a neutral taste.

The other three shortenings include an all-purpose shortening that is 20% lower in saturated fats compared to palm shortening, one for frying doughnuts, and one for puff pastry. Regal Donut Fry Shortening is a reduced-palm and soybean oil blend that Bones says has an indulgent mouthfeel, reduced palm flavor, and a faster set time than palm shortening. Regal Puff Pastry Shortening offers several advantages over other ingredients. Bakers may actually be able to use less of the shortening than margarine, says Bones, and still achieve the lift and lamination that margarine traditionally provides (the shortening is 100% fat whereas margarine contains fat as well as water and other ingredients). Since the shortening is not made from palm oil, it delivers a much cleaner flavor, she adds. And unlike margarine, the Regal Puff Pastry Shortening does not require refrigeration.

Solutions for Better Bakery Products
Drawing on its large portfolio of ingredients, DuPont Nutrition & Health, New Century, Kan. (food.dupont.com), can help bakers focus on several key areas affecting the formulation of bakery products, namely clean label, non-PHO, and shelf-life extension.

Bakery product concepts developed for the IBIE show, such as a bagel bite, mini waffle, tortillas for quesadillas, pound cake, French bread, Hawaiian bread, and cinnamon toast demonstrated the functionalities that a range of ingredients provides to a variety of bakery products.

Among product developers, there is a growing interest in clean label due mainly to consumer demands and regulatory pressures. Consumers’ understanding of clean label varies, making it tricky to define. To some it means formulating products without any artificial ingredients or using minimally processed ingredients while to others it means formulating with organic ingredients or ingredients that are easy to understand what they are. Ingredient manufacturers experience this with their own customers, some of whom may think common ingredients used in bakery products like monoglycerides and diglycerides are clean label friendly while others do not, says Linda Dunning, DuPont’s product manager of systems and texturants. She says that asking customers what their definition of clean label is and what ingredients are acceptable to them allows the DuPont ingredient specialists to develop solutions around the selected ingredients. Some of these ingredient solutions in the company’s portfolio that allow bakers to produce clean label products include hydrocolloids, antimicrobials, and enzymes, among others.

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Another challenge facing food manufacturers is finding effective replacements for PHOs in their formulations. DuPont’s ingredient solutions include a range of non-PHO emulsifiers [distilled monoglycerides, lecithin, diacetyl tartaric acid esters of monoglycerides and diglycerides (DATEM), and enzyme-modified lecithin] under the DIMODAN, SOLEC, and PANODAN brand names that promise the same functionalities as their PHO counterparts. Made from non-PHO vegetable oils, organic acids, and glycerol, the ingredients can strengthen dough and provide a soft crumb in baked goods such as cake, cookies, and cake doughnuts.

To prevent mold spoilage in bread and thus increase its shelf life, DuPont is currently promoting Natamax B Plus, a combination of 12.5% natamycin and gamma-cyclodextrin. The ingredient is easily dispersed in water, making is ready to be sprayed directly onto bread where it provides more than three times the protection against mold development than pure natamycin, according to the company. When used on the surface of bread, manufacturers need to spray the entire surface of the bread, including the top, bottom, and sides, otherwise mold will grow on the untreated area, says Eddie Perrou, director of sales for bakery and confectionery. The use of Natamax B Plus as a mold inhibitor in bread is fairly new (the company initially developed the ingredient for use in cheese), he says, but the company is successfully selling the ingredient to a number of bakeries.

Replacing PHOs
One challenge facing manufacturers of bakery products is finding effective replacements for PHOs in their formulations. “Partially hydrogenated oils are a complex mixture of fatty acids, including trans-isomers, which ultimately provide desired functionality to bakers,” says Frank Flider, oil expert for QUALISOY, Chesterfield, Mo. (qualisoy.com). “These functionalities, which include tightly controlled melting ranges, structure, eating qualities, workability of dough and icings, shelf life, flavor, and flavor release, are all directly dependent upon the composition of the shortening.”

The development of PHO replacers has evolved over time. Food manufacturers tried a number of options to replace PHOs—blends of hard fats and liquid oils, palm and palm oil fractions, and fat replacers—but none were ideal, Flider says. Using these PHO replacers, he adds, required a significant amount of reformulation that often changed the flavor, texture, eating qualities, and costs of products, which was not accepted by consumers.

Manufacturers then turned to interesterification of hard fats or fully hydrogenated oils with liquid oils, but while the shortenings produced in this way solved some problems, they still posed challenges in terms of melting ranges, workability, structure, and mouthfeel, says Flider. “Much of the functionality of PHO shortenings was provided by a combination of trans fatty acids and saturated fatty acids, and this composition could not be matched with these techniques. Additionally, because there was an inordinate level of polyunsaturates compared to PHOs, these second-generation products experienced flavor and oxidative stability issues.”

The key was to find a way to reduce the amount of polyunsaturates while maintaining the functions that PHO shortening gives, says Flider, and this is best accomplished by developing shortenings that behave like high-trans oils using high oleic soybean oil as the liquid phase. “Interesterification of fully hydrogenated oil with high oleic soybean oil has shown to very closely resemble the functionality of PHOs to the point that the interesterified replacements could easily be ‘dropped in’ as direct replacements for PHOs,” he continues.

Of course, the research on high oleic soybean oil as a replacement for PHOs in bakery and other applications continues. One area of focus is to bring the oil to full commercialization through commitment from seed companies, farmers, processors, marketers, and food companies, says Flider. He notes that high oleic soybean acreage and oil production is expected to more than double year upon year to about 9.3 billion pounds of oil available within the next decade.

So what comes next for soybeans with enhanced traits and the ingredients produced from them? “Development of other next-generation soybeans is geared largely toward human and animal nutrition,” says Flider. “High omega-3 soybean oil as well as high-oil, low-carbohydrate, low-fiber, and improved amino acid soybeans are at various points in the development stream. It is easy to foresee a place for many of these oils in products such as whipped toppings, egg substitutes, meat substitutes, nondairy creamers, and high-protein baked goods, to name a few. In the near term, the most applicable improvements for baking applications will be seen in the interesterified high oleic soybean arena, as formulations are fine-tuned, processing and production capacities are increased, and economics are improved.”

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Emulsifiers Get an Update
“Corbion has been a producer of functional ingredients for decades,” says Jim Robertson, global product manager at Corbion, Lenexa, Kan. (corbion.com/bakery). One key ingredient category is emulsifiers. “Emulsifiers are used in bakery products for all types of reasons, such as delaying starch retrogradation, improving loaf volume, improving loaf symmetry, and better proof tolerance. There’s a lot of functionality that emulsifiers bring so they’re widely used.”

The company recently reformulated its Ensemble emulsifier line to remove all partially hydrogenated oils that these emulsifiers have historically been manufactured from. The new non-PHO Ensemble emulsifiers are promoted as fairly easy to use, drop-in ingredients that minimize the amount of tweaking bakers and manufacturers need to make to their formulas—all while providing the same shelf-life stability and handling properties, says Robertson. Six non-PHO emulsifiers make up the Ensemble line, and five of them work specifically in bakery products. Of the five, BFP 550 functions across the widest variety of bakery applications—from cake mixes, where it improves batter aeration and cell structure and helps the product from going stale, to icings where it aerates, disperses fat, and provides stability. Made up of monoglycerides and diglycerides, the ingredient improves the shelf life and flexibility of tortillas and flatbreads while giving breads and rolls a soft crumb. Finally, BFP 550 functions in American-style biscuits, cookies, crackers, and batters.

GMS 520 and GMS 540 are hydrated monoglycerides that, when used in place of powdered monoglycerides, can reduce mixing time. The pumpable pastes easily disperse in the dough to enhance softness and improve crumb grain in yeast-raised breads and rolls. The difference between the ingredients is that GMS 520 has a 21% minimum monoglyceride content and GMS 540 has 38.5% monoglycerides. The last of the five non-PHO Ensemble emulsifiers for bakery are Starplex 590 and Starplex 590 F powdered distilled monoglycerides. Bakers using either ingredient can expect improved dough handling and machinability in addition to anti-staling and crumb softening in breads and rolls and improved flexibility, mouthfeel, and softness in tortillas and flatbreads. Starplex 590 F can also be included in cake mixes where it reduces peaking in the finished layer and sheet cakes.

While promoting the functional benefits of the Ensemble ingredients in a variety of bakery product concepts showcased at the IBIE show, Robertson gave a sneak peek for a new line of ingredients to debut by mid-2017. The ingredients include various emulsifier systems made from or including propylene glycol monoesters for aeration and better stability in cakes. Expect to see promotion of the new range of ingredients at food industry shows later this year, says Robertson.

Bakery products are part of most people’s day and can be consumed during all meals. Despite the challenges facing bakers—from consumer demands and regulatory requirements to food fads and improving the eating experience—they are delivering a wider variety of delicious and appealing bakery products thanks in part to ingredient developments.

Next month’s Ingredients section will cover pulses.

A Taste of IBIE
A sweet-sour doughnut, Cajun kolache, and a cookie made with ancient grains and purple barley are just a few of the creative product concepts that ingredient manufacturers developed for the 2016 International Bakery Innovation Expo (IBIE).

Consumers want innovation in the food products they purchase and look to food manufacturers to develop new and interesting products. Bunge, St. Louis, Mo. (bungenorthamerica.com), for example, served okonomiyaki, a savory Japanese pancake made with millet from its Non-GMO Project Verified milled ancient grains line and Whole Harvest organic soybean oil, both introduced at IBIE. The ancient grains line also features sorghum and quinoa. Malted sorghum muffin and quinoa croissant product concepts showed how bakers can move beyond using just wheat flour to add visual, textural, and taste appeal to what are otherwise common products.

ADM, Chicago, Ill. (adm.com), gave a new twist to an Old World pastry, the kolache. Traditionally, kolaches feature a fruit filling, such as apricot, strawberry, or prune. ADM went beyond the typical fruit filling with a caramel-apple ancient grain streusel kolache and a Cajun kolache made with red beans and textured soy concentrate filling flavored with natural flavors. Wanting to give the traditional sweet icing an unexpected twist, food technologists at Corbion created a version with a mouth-puckering sourness. The sour icing, which was used on a Pink Lemonade Doughnut product concept at the IBIE show, was made with Purac Powder malic acid. The ingredient is actually for use in acid-sanded marshmallows and gummies, but the Corbion food technologists decided to incorporate the powder into the icing used on a strawberry-flavored doughnut to give it a sweet-sour flavor experience, says Ashley Robertson, marketing manager at Corbion.

Kerry, Beloit, Wis. (kerry.com), has a firm commitment to staying on trend to ensure that consumers get what they want in product formulations, says Brigham Sikora, R&D director. That’s why it developed a chai muffin product concept. “Chai is a trending flavor in the beverage world, so here it is used in bakery,” he says. Taste is just one of the company’s concerns. Kerry also focuses on nutrition and functional improvements. Kerry food technologists included Biobake enzymes for texture improvements and natural fermentation flavors in saltine-type crackers and Kerry Pro and Ultranor proteins in a protein-enriched roll.

IBIE was an opportunity for Daniel Marciani, the executive chef at Ardent Mills, Denver, Colo. (ardentmills.com), to develop an extensive lineup of bakery product concepts using the company’s flours as well as trendy ingredients like heirloom wheat, ancient grains, and sprouted grains. He formulated pizza crust and lemon pound cake with Sprouted White Spring Whole Wheat Flour and topped a cake doughnut with puffed amaranth and quinoa sprinkles. Blueberry scones featured Sustagrain Whole Barley Flour and purple barley flakes. In addition to cakes, different types of bread, and even a tortilla made with rye chops, rye pumpernickel, and white rye flour, Marciani baked two cookie concepts. One, an ancient grain cookie, was made with purple barley, quinoa, and millet while the other one, a double chocolate salted cookie, contained pumpernickel rye flour.

With health and wellness on the minds of many consumers, product developers are formulating bakery products with added nutrients like fiber and protein or reducing the amount of sweeteners and fat. Several key product concepts distributed at IBIE illustrate this. To demonstrate the functionalities of its nonhydrogenated fats, AAK, Edison, N.J. (aak.com), developed savory flatbread and cinnamon Danish product concepts. The flatbread featured Cisao 7831 palm-based, nonhydrogenated, non-trans fat flaked shortening, which gave it the flakiness of baked products without the use of a roll-in process. The Danish was formulated with a blend of Cisao 8253 flaked shortening for a light, flaky texture and Cisao 8285 all-purpose margarine for emulsification and smooth plasticity. Briess Malt & Ingredients, Chilton, Wis. (briess.com), showed how easy it is to reduce added sugar in bakery products like the pound cake and biscuit product concepts it developed for IBIE by using a sprouted whole grain nutritive sweetener. InnoSweet Sprouted Whole Wheat Powder, which Briess introduced at IBIE, contributes zero added sugars, functions like malted extract in baked goods, and brings sweetness and browning to bagels, crackers, cakes, and more. Finally, flatbread and gluten-free breakfast bars got a boost of fiber with a new dietary fiber ingredient introduced by Ingredion, Westchester, Ill. (ingredion.us). VERSAFIBE 2470 is a corn-based dietary fiber (modified corn starch) that has a minimum total dietary fiber of 70% on a dry solids basis. The company also notes that the ingredient has low water-holding capacity so it has little to no effect on product processing. Protein and additional fiber fortification was due to the inclusion of pulse flours under the Homecraft line. Each serving of the breakfast bar (40 g) and flatbread (50 g) product concepts had 4 g of fiber, or 16% of the Daily Value, and 2 g of protein.

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Citrus Fiber Maintains Soft Texture
With the move toward formulating more clean label products made with ingredients derived from natural sources, ingredient manufacturers are ramping up their efforts at promoting their ingredients that fit these standards. Made from citrus fiber, a by-product of citrus pulp from the orange juice industry, Citri-Fi is one such ingredient, says Nesha Zalesny, technical sales manager at Fiberstar, River Falls, Wis. (fiberstar.net). To produce the fiber, the pulp goes through a high shear process and then is washed with water. “It’s an extremely clean ingredient,” says Zalesny. “The harshest chemical that it ever sees is water.” The fiber particles have a large surface area that makes Citri-Fi an effective emulsifier and gives it high water-holding capabilities even in gluten-free baked goods. Zalesny also adds that the ingredient forms a gel almost immediately upon contact with water, and it continues to hold it, helping to give baked goods such as most types of cakes, muffins, and chewy-type cookies a fresh-baked, soft texture over the shelf life. Another function of Citri-Fi is that it can replace some of the pectin in bake-stable fillings, keeping them from drying out or from forming crystals.

Reduce Sodium, Keep the Flavor
Some bakery manufacturers have reached their limits on salt reduction, and if they go further, functionality will be compromised, leading to the loss of gluten structure and taste and texture problems, says Julie Schutte, senior food application scientist with the Cargill Salt business unit, Minneapolis, Minn. (cargill.com/salt). To help bakers achieve deeper reductions in sodium while maintaining important functional properties and flavor, there’s Cargill’s Potassium Pro Plus, a combination of potassium chloride and naturally derived flavors. The ingredient made its debut at the 2016 International Bakery Innovation Expo where it was featured in the tortilla and cream cheese filling for a Reduced Sodium Cream Cheese Pinwheel product concept. Schutte says that the ingredient allowed for a 40% sodium reduction in the tortilla and a 30% sodium reduction in the cream cheese filling and still produced a product that had salty taste impact without off flavors.

Make Baked Goods Sparkle
Spun sugar decorations, sprinkles, dragées, and nonpareils add visual and textural appeal to baked goods, and in the case of many of these decorations, flavor as well. Add to the list of decorative toppings Edible Glitter flakes and shapes from Watson, West Haven, Conn. (watson-inc.com). Both types are colored with natural colorings, are bake stable, and are made without sugar and PHOs. Flavorings can be added to the glitter as well. The flakes are gum arabic–based and have a light texture, making them perfect to use on creams where bakers do not want a crunchy texture that comes from other decorations like sprinkles or nonpareils, says Moira Watson, vice president of marketing and communications. Use the glitter, which comes in a range of colors, on baked goods that a traditional sprinkles does not adhere to, such as powdered sugar doughnuts. The Edible Glitter shapes are made from a film composed of hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose that is run through a die and cut into the desired shapes like stars, hearts, and Christmas trees. Since they are slow to solubilize, the shapes work well in moist environments like a frozen cake stored in a plastic dome container, the inside of which tends to gather moisture, says Watson.

Ingredient Roundup
For additional ingredients to use in formulating bakery products, consider the following options to improve functionality, taste, and texture.

• Aromaferm cereal ferments from AB Mauri North America, St. Louis, Mo. (abmna.com), help reduce dough fermentation times while still giving sourdough flavors to bread. The ingredients—three dry and one liquid—are for bakers who do not have time for long dough fermentations.

• The egg is truly a multifunctional ingredient in bakery formulations due to its unique combination of proteins and fat. This helps to retain moisture, stabilize foams, improve size and shape, emulsify, and contribute to browning and color development, among many more functionalities. Ready-to-use dried, liquid, and frozen whole eggs, yolks, and whites offer food manufacturers ease of use, convenience, and uniformity in such products as flourless chocolate cake, chocolate almond biscotti with crème anglaise dipping sauce, and sponge cake with chocolate mousse. The American Egg Board, Park Ridge, Ill. (aeb.org), developed these to show bakers benefits that egg ingredients contribute, such as a soft texture in the flourless cake and rich, smooth, creamy mouthfeel in the crème anglaise dipping sauce.

• American Key Food Products, Closter, N.J. (akfponline.com), is bringing a line of superfine white and brown rice flours from Kumamoto Flour Milling, Kumamoto, Japan, to food manufacturers in North America. The rice flours are processed from whole, short-grain rice that gives the flours better water absorption qualities and viscosity. The superfine particle size and the tight particle size distribution help to produce higher rise in the volume of baked goods and a more uniform consistency in the crumb structure, according to the company.

• Sprouted whole grains and seeds have enhanced nutrition, and consumers can find these ingredients in breads, tortillas, crackers, and more. Bay State Milling, Quincy, Mass. (baystatemilling.com), uses a controlled germination process to produce its BeneGrain sprouted whole grain and seed ingredients. Most are available in flour form, but several (amaranth, millet, quinoa, flax seed, and chia seed) come in whole form for inclusion in dough or to top baked products.

• Delavau Food Partners, Philadelphia, Pa. (delavaufood.com), presented its expanded line of Encore ingredients at the IBIE. The functions of the ingredients include mold inhibition, anti-staling, dough conditioning, and improving strength and volume.

• Manufacturers of organic bread and crackers can choose from a range of organic compliant enzymes from DSM, Delft, Netherlands (dsm.com/food). Produced under the Bakezyme name, the enzymes include glucose oxidases that can strengthen the gluten network, produce drier dough, and work synergistically with hemicellulases, as well as amylases that help reduce fermentation time and improve crumb structure and softness in bread. Several hemicellulases bring a number of improvements to dough and how it develops as the bread bakes, including results on volume and crumb structure, shape, and oven spring.

• Ingredients derived from microalgae promise food manufacturers healthful, more sustainable options for food formulation, according to TerraVia, South San Francisco, Calif. (algavia.com, algawise.com), the manufacturer of AlgaVia Protein-Rich Whole Algae Powder, Alga-Via Lipid-Rich Whole Algae Powder, and AlgaWise Algae Butter. The first two ingredients can enrich the protein and monounsaturated fat content, respectively, in bread and crackers. The lipid algae ingredient can replace eggs and dairy fats, and also is a source of dietary fiber. The palm-free, nonhydrogenated algae butter can be used in laminated dough applications, cookie fillings, biscuits, and icing.

Baking With Dairy Proteins
In addition to gums and starches being used for their hydrocolloidal and texturizing properties in products like cake and cake mixes, some ingredient manufacturers are also exploring these properties in dairy proteins. One such company, Arla Foods Ingredients, Viby J, Denmark (arlafoodsingredients.com), developed Nutrilac, a 100% whey protein ingredient derived from milk that is said to provide desired softness to various types of cake applications, improve the structure of gluten-free baked goods, and enrich baked goods with protein and calcium. The ingredient also functions as a partial egg replacer in cake formulations. “When you put Nutrilac and egg together, there’s a synergy and you actually get better products,” says John Lindergård Kjær, head of sales at Arla Foods Ingredients. The ingredient is more than a typical whey protein concentrate 80; it is a blend of different proteins chosen and combined to meet the needs of a specific application, Kjær explains. “There are different protein sources in a normal standard whey protein concentrate 80, so it means filtrating them, splitting them up, and putting proteins together that have a similar functionality. Then we modify them to strengthen their functionality and mix them together depending on what application and functionality we’re looking for in the final application.”

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Karen Nachay,
Senior Associate Editor
[email protected]

References