Quality prediction of bakery products in the initial phase of process design

The development of food production processes is facilitated by tools which explore the interaction between process design, operation conditions and product characteristics. In this work an approach how to set-up a simulation model is presented for the phenomena and transformations which occur during baking and which fix the product quality. The simulation model has three consecutive parts: mass and heat transport in the product, transformations concerning starch state transition and color, and the formation of quality attributes (color, softness, crispness and staling). The model for mass and heat transfer is based on laws of conservation and expressed in partial differential equations for spatial products. The starch state transition and color formation are a mixture of qualitative and quantitative information, while the product quality model is mainly based on qualitative information. The model is applied to three bakery products: bread, biscuit and a cake-type. The results show that the model estimates the product quality and its transformations as a function of dough composition, baking and storage condition. The results fit well to observed changes of properties and product quality during baking. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.