Baked Products

Abstract

Fat has long been one of the most crucial ingredients in bakery items such as breads, cakes, cookies, and pastries. It affects quality characteristics including color, taste, texture, and aroma of bakery products, which significantly influence overall customer acceptability. On the other hand, consumer concern about the adverse health consequences of overconsumption of trans fats as well as consumer demand for fat reduction for a healthy lifestyle and expected lifespan gave an impetus to develop a variety of reduced-fat food products. However, it is a great challenge to imitate the same product qualities that the original solid fats would give. There are a number of fat mimetics that are generally used in bakery products, ranging from gums, inulin, maltodextrins, whey protein concentrates, chia gels, oleogels, etc. This chapter provides a comprehensive and concise review of the use of fat mimetics, with a focus on recent research updates and their potential applications in bakery products. Generally, bakery products prepared with fat mimetics at high levels had higher hardness values and less acceptable sensory properties. However, studies have shown that using oleogel technology as a fat replacement strategy allows obtaining higher fat replacement levels while maintaining acceptable product quality. Thus, the negative effects of removing the fat from a product may be solved with the use of oleogel/shortening blends and partial fat replacement by using oleogel/shortening blends seems to be the most successful technique to provide higher fat replacement levels while preserving healthy and good product quality.