Ohmic Heating—a Novel Approach for Gluten-Free Bread Baking

Gluten-free (GF) batters usually present several technological challenges that limit the performance during conventional baking and the resulting product quality. Due to the volumetric heating principle and faster heating rates, ohmic heating (OH) may be advantageous compared with conventional baking. Therefore, the potential of using ohmic heating as a novel approach for gluten-free bread baking was explored. In detail, the effect of different OH process parameters (power input, holding time) on the chemical and functional properties (specific volume, crumb firmness and relative elasticity, pore properties, color, starch gelatinization) and digestibility of breads was investigated. Results showed that GF breads could benefit from the uniform rapid heating during processing, as these breads showed superior functional properties (specific volume, 2.86–3.44 cm3/g; relative elasticity, 45.05–56.83%; porosity, 35.17–40.92%) compared with conventional oven-baked GF bread (specific volume, 2.60 cm3/g; relative elasticity, 44.23%; porosity, 37.63%). In order to maximize bread expansion and the OH performance, it was found that the OH process could be improved by applying the electrical energy in three descending power steps: first step with high power input (in this study, 2–6 kW for 15 s), followed by 1 kW for 10 s, and 0.3 kW for 1–30 min. In total, ohmic baking only needed a few minutes to obtain a fully expanded GF bread. The determination of pasting properties and starch digestibility demonstrated that these breads were comparable or even superior to GF breads baked in a conventional baking oven.