Baking of muffins: Kinetics of crust color development and optimal baking time

MARÍA M. URETA; D.F. OLIVERA; V. O. SALVADORI

FOOD AND BIOPROCESS TECHNOLOGY

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2014 vol. 7 p. 3208 - 3216

1935-5130

Baking is a decisive stage in the production of bakery products in general -muffins in particular- for most of the quality attributes of the final products depend on it. The aim of this work is to model the kinetics of muffin crust color development during baking and to evaluate the feasibility of this kinetic model to predict the baking times. Surface color is represented by the Browning Index, and the effect of baking temperature (from 140 ºC to 220 ºC) and process convective characteristics (natural convection, forced convection and steam assisted forced convection) are analyzed. Minimal baking times are calculated from experimental core temperature measurements. The modeling of browning kinetics, which incorporates the optimal crust color determined by sensory analysis, allows the estimation of optimal baking times. For all the tested conditions top > tmin, assuring a product whose inner structure was already totally baked. Finally, minimal, half and optimal baking times present an exponential dependence with the oven temperature. Besides, there are no significant differences between both forced convection modes.