Are you on the quest to extend your bread’s shelf life? Achieve that ideal softness and chewiness, while ensuring freshness and preventing mold can sometimes feel like a tall order for wholesale /industrial bakers. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, it’s always a good idea to start by taking a closer look at your ingredients! Let’s deep dive into the world of bread ingredients and explore how to improve the shelf life of bread.
Better Ingredients, Better Bread, Better Shelf Life!
When it comes to enhancing softness and moisture in your bread, the magic lies in your formulation. Shortening and enzymes are key players in obtaining bread with a great flavor and good mouthfeel. Shortening, or fats, help disrupt the network structure of the bread, resulting in a softer texture that has a nice bite. On the other hand, enzymes, contribute to softness but also play a crucial role in maintaining the desired crumb texture over the bread’s shelf life.
So, how can you get that satisfying chewiness consumers love in your bread? Here’s where the quality of your flour and the addition of vital wheat gluten come into play. High-quality bread flour and vital wheat gluten interact to create a dynamic duo that enhances the chewiness of your bread, elevating it to a whole new level.
Keeping Mold At Bay
Mold prevention is a common concern for today’s bakers. One common solution to this issue is adding fiber to sliced bread. Here’s why that helps. Fibers, particularly soluble ones, bind to water within the bread, reducing its water activity and inhibiting microbial growth. However, the practical application of adding fiber to your recipe can present challenges depending on your formulation.
While it may extend shelf life initially, the alterations in dough rheology may lead to a dry and tight dough, prompting the addition of more water by operators. Not understanding this, and not baking out the water enough, can counteract the intended reduction in water activity achieved by the fiber. As a result, many bakeries need to carefully approach and consider alternatives like increasing the amount of emulsifiers, shortening, or oil in the formulation to combat mold growth and improve the shelf life of the product.
In the battle against mold, calcium propionate is often used with vinegar at an amount above 0.35% (dfw). Not only is this discouraged, it also produces a sharp vinegary aroma in the room where you store the bread before it goes on the trucks. It is recommended to first look into your sanitation practices. The use of cultured wheat, raisin concentrate, encapsulated sorbic acid should also be considered. Cultured wheat offers a dual advantage of mold prevention while maintaining a clean label. Good sanitation practices will also benefit your baker (and product shelf life) in the long run and should not be ignored. Both of these can be used to extend the shelf life of your bread while ensuring its quality doesn’t suffer.
Get More Technical Baking Advice
Achieving the perfect balance of softness, chewiness, and mold prevention in your bread requires a nuanced understanding of ingredients and their interactions. By harnessing the power of shortening, enzymes, high-quality flour, vital wheat gluten, fibers, sanitation practices, and cultured wheat, you can create bread that not only delights the senses but also stands the test of time on your bakery shelves.
Want to delve deeper into the art and science of improving the shelf life of bread? Download our FREE Baking Bread Pocket Guide! It’s packed with invaluable insights and practical tips from industry experts to help you elevate your bread-making game to new heights.
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