Healthy and functional baked goods are a great addition to your product line. Not only are they a big hit with consumers these days, but they genuinely make people feel better, which is sort of the goal of baking, right? “Healthy” baking can be a broad term but there are a few things that can really make your brand stand out. Something the baking industry has been experimenting with in recent years: probiotics.
What are the benefits of probiotics?
A few include:
- Supplement nutrient deficiencies
- Lower cholesterol levels
- Correct the composition of the intestinal balance
- Reduce the impact of food intolerances
- Produce beneficial biomolecules such as B vitamins
- Reduce the increase of colon cancer
Here’s the tricky part
The baking step is intended to destroy microorganisms, both harmful and helpful in the case of probiotics. However, there are still ways to reap the benefits. One is to inject them as sweet or savory fillings to bread after baking. Even better, strains are available that are resistant to heat treatment and stable in low acid pH.
Industrially available probiotics could be a single pure strain or a mixture of strains. Common probiotic bacteria include Lactobacillus acidophilus, L. rhamnosus, L. casei, Bifidobacterium lactis, etc. There is ongoing research on new strains which may be resistant to or highly viable in food processing/gut conditions.
