Use of a Pressuremeter To Measure the Kinetics of Carbon Dioxide Evolution in Chemically Leavened Wheat Flour Dough

Abstract

Among a number of impediments to a wider use of chemical leavening agents in bakery applications is the lack of standardized instrumentation capable of providing information on the rates of CO2 production from chemical leaveners in a format that is meaningful to both the technologist (i.e., the dough rate of reaction or DRR) and the researcher (e.g., in terms of fundamental unitskmol CO2 per kg of dough per s). This paper presents an original methodology to carry out the DRR test using a commercial pressuremeter, the Gassmart apparatus, and to model the kinetics of CO2 evolution of chemically leavened dough. Lean formula doughs were leavened at 27 and 39 degrees C with four chemical leavening systems containing sodium bicarbonate and one of four leavening acids, sodium acid pyrophosphate 40 (SAPP), adipic acid (ADA), potassium acid tartrate (KAT), and glucono-delta-lactone (GDL). Chemical kinetics theory was used to gain an insight into the reaction mechanisms responsible for the evolution of carbon dioxide from the leaveners. A first-order reaction kinetics model was found to be suitable for describing the neutralizing properties of GDL and ADA leavening systems, whereas a first-order reaction kinetics model for irreversible parallel reactions better described the leavening properties of the acidic salts KAT and SAPP.