Since no further processing can take place during resting, this leads to a process delay. Therefore, the opportunity to shorten and control dough relaxation and thereby resting times represents an interesting approach for every bakery for improving process efficiency. By developing an in-line applicable process, wheat dough relaxation is achieved in a few seconds based on mechanical (ultrasound) or electrical (AC voltage) invasive impulses. Corresponding viscoelastic properties of wheat dough after the forced relaxation and after certain resting times are validated on different analytic devices with different stress types and levels. Extensibility measurements of voltage or ultrasound treated dough showed corresponding elongation properties with dough rested for 25 minutes. Moreover, the application of mechanical/electrical impulses increases dough softness and even relaxation halftimes comparable to a resting time of 50 minutes.
The developed process enables a highly controllable dough relaxation. Besides this increased process efficiency, the design of structure and process is possible in a new way, contributing to a better understanding of structure-function relationship by a targeted manipulation of structure.
If you would like more information or would like to discuss this research further please contact Silvia Brandner.
Each year EFFoST and Cargill present the student of the year award to six students and also give them the opportunity to showcase their research. In this article, Silvia Brandner who won the 1st prize for the PhD student of the year discusses his research. Currently, Silvia is a PhD candidate at the Department of Brewing and Beverage technology at Technical University of Munich.