Dust formation in French fries

Abstract

In this study we report on the analysis of dust formation, a quality problem arising in the industrial processing of par-fried, frozen french fries. This dust constitutes fractured pieces broken off the crust during finish frying. We claim that this dust problem has many similarities with flaking arising during the final-baking of par-baked french baguettes, i.e. the two problems are governed by the same physical principles. Inspired by the hypotheses behind flaking, we have made an experimental design, where we have perturbed the operating conditions of an industrial processing line of french fries. The measured dust during finish frying is correlated with the physical properties of the crust, measured in the different unit operations of the industrial processing line, and the operating conditions. We have shown that dust is non-linearly correlated to 1) the moisture content of the crust as influenced by drying and par-frying, and 2) the freezing rate in the industrial tunnel freezer. Remarkably, the amount of dust decrease with the increase of frozen storage time, which we have explained via viscoelastic relaxation of locked-in stress - mediated by moisture migrating from core to crust. This decay is shown to be independent of pretreatments, which only determines its starting value. With the given relations industry can in principle control the dust problem, but these measures have to be weighed against their effects on other objectives of the industry.