Measuring and Addressing Texture Challenges in Healthy Baked Products There is a continuing trend toward development of baked products with a healthy nutritional profile. However, to succeed in the market, it is essential that sensory properties of baked products not be compromised. Texture is an important aspect of this. Instrumental measurements are important tools for product developers that can complement sensory panel assessments and enable quantification of the effects of process variations. A range of testing protocols and instruments suitable for different product types is available. Compression between flat plates is appropriate for testing compressible products such as breads and cakes: initial loading provides information on firmness, and subsequent unloading and recompression measure properties such as cohesiveness. Examples are presented from trials evaluating salt content and bran supplementation in bread and for a gluten-free cake development project. Brittle products such as biscuits (cookies and crackers) can be tested using protocols such as three point bending and rod penetrometry. The former provides information on how a product snaps, and the latter provides information on product crunchiness. Examples of the effects of moisture and two types of fiber (bran and inulin) addition on biscuit sensory properties are presented. Bran and inulin both increased the energy of penetration. Bran reduced instrumental measurements of crunchiness, and inulin increased initial bite force. |