A Rheological Study of Mechanical Dough Development and Long Fermentation Processes for Cream-Cracker Dough Production

Abstract

In the manufacture of products such as bread and cream-crackers mechanical development and long fermentation processes are used to develop dough. A rheological study of cream-cracker doughs made using both types of process has shown that fermentation weakens, but does not rearrange, intermolecular interactions. The rearrangement of storage proteins into a continuous network of gluten is achieved by the shearing action of mixing, which need only be gentle after a sufficient period of fermentation, but must be intense if prior fermentation is omitted, as in mechanical dough development. In the long fermentation process a dough with the desired characteristics was produced following a minimum of 4 h fermentation time. Dough with similar rheology was produced by mechanical development when additional water was used in the recipe. For mechanically developed cream-cracker doughs there was also an increase in the elasticity of the developed gluten. When the Chorleywood Bread Process was invented it was found that more water and less protein were required to achieve the same dough rheology as in long fermentation processes. It seems that the same relationship between mechanical dough development and long fermentation may apply to other products, such as cream-crackers. These results confirm that the technological experience gained by switching from long fermentation to mechanical dough development processes for bread production could be applied to other products such as cream-crackers. © 1997 SCI