Impact of Dough Property Characterization on Industrial Bread Production

Global markets are moving towards increased product variety and shorter product lifespan, and this also applies to bakery products from large industrial bakeries. Application of the business strategy mass customization could potentially counter this, as this strategy aims for offering customized products at near mass production cost. However, today the production is characterised by experienced-based adjustments of the processes and long product development time, which is partly caused by lack of knowledge of the dough properties and analysis of the dough at industrial settings. To address this, a protocol for analysis of large deformation properties for yeasted wheat dough samples from industrial bakeries has been established. Test of the new protocol revealed that it was able to differentiate between some variables such as different dough types, while some other variables were not possible to detect with this protocol. The perspectives for the analysis protocol may be to develop a range of industrial applicable analysis methods, which can be used for predictable, reliable and objective measurements of the dough. However, before the industrial dough analyses can be fully utilised, it is necessary to make a model of the correlations between all the variable relevant for the final product, including ingredient properties and process parameters. This is a prerequisite before mass customization can be implemented.