Cereal Chem 72:320-325  |  VIEW ARTICLE

Moisture Redistribution Throughout the Bread Loaf During Staling and Its Effect on Mechanical Properties.

L. Piazza and P. Masi. Copyright 1995 by the American Association of Cereal Chemists, Inc. 

The change of the moisture profile within a bread loaf and bread texture during storage up to 300 hr at 25 C were investigated. Three different types of bread were considered: 1) bread from straight dough using conventional baker's yeast fermentation; 2) one-stage sour-dough bread from starter culture of Lactobacillus brevis; and 3) bread from straight dough acidified with lactic acid. An attempt to correlate bread-staling kinetics to water migration was made by considering the mass transport phenomena involved in the process. To evaluate bread staling, the stress-strain behavior of bread during aging was investigated. By considering the moisture profile within the bread loaf, a correlation between local moisture content and texture of stale bread was found. The experimental results proved that, to prevent staling, it is more important to slow down the dehydration phenomena rather than it is to increase the initial moisture content in the bread.