Baked In Science

High fiber is one of the hottest topics in the baking industry. Partly because of its challenging, yet highly-functional and nutritious role, and partly because of the FDA’s recent work on defining it better. In June, new guidelines were announced on what can be labeled as “dietary fiber.” To help explain what this means for the baking industry, the economic impact, and what else is on the horizon in way of regulations, I chat with Lee Sanders, Senior Vice President, Government Relations & Public Affairs / Corporate Secretary for the American Bakers Association. Now baking with fiber is a little more straight forward. However, it won’t do any good if you can’t bake with it correctly. So to answer your questions, I bring on Roberto Serrano, Vice President of Product Development at Grain Millers. Their work is changing the way fiber is used in baking, from water absorption and a gelling capacity that mimics hydrocolloids, to playing a significant role in replacing fat. Some of the question we cover are: H

What’s your food safety culture? No matter the size of your operation, food safety programs and practices should be weaved into your company’s DNA. But don’t worry! To help answer your questions and craft an action plan, I talk with two food safety experts. First up, Bonnie Biegel, Director QA, Americas, for AIB International helps me dive into issue of allergens. Did you know undeclared allergens are the number one reason for recalls in the U.S.? Bonnie shares best practices for allergen control, what questions to ask your suppliers, tests to check for contamination, and how FSMA is impacting the industry. We also touch on how storage and line scheduling can help make things safer and more efficient. Bonnie can be reached at info@aibonline.org. Don’t forget to mention this podcast when you call 785-537-4750 before Dec 30th 2018 to receive 20% off your next in-plant training. My next guest is Cathy Davis, CEO of Food Industry Employment Program and former processor of food science for 20 years. She

The future of baking is clean label. And the future of clean label is sourdough. Why? Sourdough systems are cleaner systems. They involve a natural process and call for just a few ingredients. And low pH means mold isn’t really an issue. So how do you bake a clean label Sourdough? To answer that question, I first talk with George DePasquale a baker with Essential Baking Company. They work with organic ingredients and a simple label as much as possible. Their sourdough products have been taking off the last 5 years. We talk about why fermentation and sourdough work so well for clean label, the biggest challenges, and ways to fine tune the process. I also answer a few of George’s questions, like: - How to replace Mono and Diglycerides - What enzymes to use - Why a thermal profile can make a big difference - How protein can help your crust For another perspective on sourdough, I’m joined by David Deblauwe, a sourdough baker at Puratos. He has worked in bakeries since the age of 12 and has a real passion f

Use nature to bake things right! That’s right, I’m talking about those proteins that offer the solutions the baking industry needs: enzymes! And we cover your LinkedIn questions! To help with the answers we have with us Matt Patrick, head of Research and Development for Delavau Food Partners. Matt and his team spend their days using a variety of materials in the food and ingredient industry to formulate solutions for the baking industry. Lots of those solutions are enzymes—from extending shelf life to cleaning up labels, and just about everything in-between! A few of the enzyme questions he answers are: - What exactly are enzymes and how dody they work? - How do you know if the enzyme did it’s job, and is then deactivated? - What enzymes can boost volume? Relax dough? - What solutions can we look to replace emulsifiers? - Can enzymes help low-sugar doughs? We really dig into the science of enzymes, and what’s happening on a molecular level. Enzymes are a natural protein that do very specific tasks b

After getting over 12,000 views on our LinkedIn post, and plenty of comments on how Chadwick White was able to throw a gluten free pizza crust in the air, I was able to get Chad onto my show. As one of the original founders of Udi’s bread, Chad shared the beginnings of his gluten-free journey, and the challenges he faced when sourcing for gluten-free ingredients. He discusses the importance of the secret ingredient he used for making the dough so elastic that it holds up to the throw in the air. Chirag Sabunani, a gluten-free baker, discusses the need for gluten-free products in India and asks Chad about shelf life extension techniques. Chad can be reached at chadwick@glutenfreebakingsolutions.com . Also in this episode, we have a HVAC analysis expert, Paul Ziehr talks about segregating your bakery into a gluten-free area and what to look at when you do this. He recommends techniques you can use to save huge on energy costs. Paul can be reached at paulz@energyrecoverypartners.com.

Aaron Clanton from AIB International and Jacinth Cote from Lallemand, our podcast experts on fermentation get into the weeds with fermentation. Jacinth discusses Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the common Baker’s yeast (link to http://bakerpedia.com/ingredients/yeast/), and how its made at Lallemand, and how they preserve it till bakers get their hands on it. Then we go into fermentation questions posed to us from LinkedIn. How do you work with low sugar bread? How does time and temperature have an effect on cracker dough? Why does retarded pizza dough have blisters? How to multiply a biga for croissant? What is the key factor to obtaining a good fermentation for gluten-free recipe? Were some of the interesting questions answered. This episode is brought to you by Lallemand, their new Instaferm® VitaD® Premix let’s you enhance vitamin D in your baked product. Contact smoodley@lallemand.com to request a sample today. Now, go grab a beer or other fermented beverages and get smart on how to control fermentation at

These are the American Society of Baking 2018 Innovation Awardees. Remove chlorinated flour and aluminum from your cake ingredient label? In this interview, Chuck Galliher from Puratos discussed how Tegral Silver Layer Cake uses the fundamentals of hydration to create a system that can hold up to the sugar and fats in a typical high ratio cake system. This base has no trans fat, no artificial colors and flavors, no PGME, no aluminum and no chlorinated flour. Can’t believe this? Get a sample by calling 800-654-0036 or visit Puratos.us ProTrax is an innovation from Intralox. It is a unique modular solution where they incorporate magnets into the belt itself. Bakers will get better pan alignment, less pan jams, longer pan and belt life and eliminating foreign material contamination. To get more information, contact 888-680-2358 or visit intralox.com for more information. What is a better way to load baskets? Colborne Foodbotics’ answer is the Servo Basket Stacker/Unstacker. It is an upgrade from a conventiona

What does it take to be a Titan in the baking industry? In this surprising interview, Baking Hall of Fame inductee, Cordia Harrington talks about her entry into the baking industry. In 1996 she broke ground on her bakery, owning just 51% of it. With no manufacturing or bakery experience, she borrowed $15M from the bank just with a handshake from McDonalds. Now, her company is a giant in the industry. A risk taker, Cordia shares her tips as a woman in business on how to remain focused and clear with conversations. Cordia remains very optimistic about the future of baking and shares her vision for The Bakery Cos. Another baking titan to take note of is Rowdy Brixey. In this humble chat, we learn how Rowdy started in the industry. As you may know, he was previously an ASB Chairman and led the charge to many of the new changes we've seen in ASB. A seasoned engineer, Rowdy talks about the team and why “the “best wrench” may not be the right person to train or lead your team. Most often, when your “best wr

Are you having issues juggling a Preventative Maintenance (PM) program? Or how do you prevent grease from contaminating your food? Our first guest have the answers to these questions and more. Meet Bill Steadman from AIB International. Bill is the Manager, Quality Assurance, GMP North America. Bill reveals that contamination risk is one of the biggest issues with the lack of PMs. In this podcast, Bill also provides the top 3 tips for an effective PM program which includes design standards, scheduling and an accountability program. Our second guest is a seasoned engineer. James Lubsby is a consultant in engineering for the last 30 years. One of the frequent problems that James experience is the lack of bake out in products, causing bread to cave-in. He attributes this to the lack of understanding of how oven works, and this can be addressed with training. Oven PM program is important to prevent lateral heat issues that contributes to product quality. He also recommends solutions if your oven set points cannot

Would you like to learn the secrets of a successful food safety audit? We start with Stephanie Lopez, VP of Food Safety Services, Americas, AIB International. She shares her tips on setting the tone for an audit. Why be FSMA compliant? Well, that’s because FDA has the authority to shut down your bakery otherwise. Stephanie recommends for bakeries to have a roadmap. Start with this document for your bakery. Stephanie shares her experience on how to build successful teams excel at these audits. Our second guest is Bonnie Biegel, Director QA, Americas, AIB International who provides a run down on the tools that you need at the plant level to complete a successful audit. She stresses that the plant manager should be involved with the audit, but it should be a whole team effort, and a journey that should be shouldered by everyone on the team. What does an inspector need from the plant? She urges bakery plants to be honest with their inspections, and don’t be nervous about it because everyone is seeking the same

When a hundred things are happening all at once, do you stay focused on your product, or compete on price? How can you be successful in running your bakery business? In this humble interview with the President of Middleby Processing Group, Mark Salman shares his bakery business journey. As a $3B corporation, being entrepreneurial, allowing mistakes to happen and fast failures are encouraged, these traits are what sets Middleby apart from their competition. Prior to joining Middleby, Mark ran a successful bakery wholesale business that he successfully exited. But let’s not talk just about successes, because we don’t really learn from successes. Here, we go in deep on what he saw was his biggest failure in one of his bakery businesses. Sharing his heartfelt bakery journey, Mark advises bakers to stay focused and passionate on their businesses. In the spirit of starting a bakery, we also interviewed Jeff Dearduff from The Austin Company, a supplier to the baking industry that works with their clients on projec

Who can you go to for help with your flour challenges? Dr. Gary Hou from the Wheat Marketing Center in Portland, provides the flour quality support that you need. Besides running farinograph, moisture, ash and protein analysis, Dr. Hou, a flour expert, also consults on implementing flour quality programs and product development for bakeries. Julio, a commercial baker joins in to seek a solution for his flour quality issues. Why can’t your miller promise a consistent protein quality? What do you need to get from your miller? Do you need an in-house flour quality program? What do you need to clearly communicate with your flour miller before implementing an in-house flour program? Why does strong flour make Kaiser cuts disappear? These questions were answered in the podcast. To help bakers like Julio, Dr. Hou and Dr. Carson will teach you how to monitor your flour quality and implement an in-house flour quality program (http://bakerpedia.com/product/science-of-flour/) Do you have bakery problems that you would

We all know that baking with fiber is challenging. Not only does it mess up your absorption levels, it affects mixing time and final product attributes as well. In this episode, we have Jim Little, VP Innovations at Craftmart in Indianapolis. We talk about the new FDA regulation on fiber, and the big challenges in high fiber baking. Not all fiber are created equal. Therefore, we share some bakers tips on how to deal with flavor, texture and mold issues when baking with fiber. We discuss a new kind of fiber - resistant starch. Though a little more expensive, it has the least impact on dough as compared to many other fibers. Lastly, we covered the 5 important tips on baking with fiber. You don’t want to miss this valuable nugget on reducing your gluten usage with high fiber baking!

BAKED in Science S1 E2: The Future of Mixing Do you beat the heck out of your dough during mixing and make it as warm as possible? If so, I’d like to introduce you to a new form of cool mixing from Rapidojet. Here, we learn about Dr. Bernard Noll’s startup story for Rapidojet: continuous hydration mixing technology. From Minimal Viable Product (MVP) that didn’t sell well, to learning about how the Australians inspired him, He talks about his vision for Rapidojet and explains why it suits continuous mixing. Where else can bakers use this technology? Gluten hydration. On the macromolecular level, Rapidojet penetrates the surface tension and hydrates the individual gluten particles between 250-500 km/h. At such force, Rapidojet does two things that the traditional mixer doesn’t: - It atomizes water onto individual particles that are free falling, which increases the surface area for interaction. - The force of the water (on impact) is energy converted directly into the dough (energy and work are what develops

What will be trending in 2018? Doug Peckenpaugh of BNP media gives us an overview of the top 5 trends to watch. It’s not just clean label, but organic and fresh foods as well. Some of the other questions we dive into are: - Is old new again? - What does "health halo" really mean? In the end, value price products needs to be part of the core of the business for every baker in order for bakers to thrive in their businesses. In this episode, we also talk about why FODMAPS are important. With up to 15% of our population suffering from IBS, Manildra Australia has launched an innovative FODMAPS free mix that caters to this population. With this FODMAPS free mix, people can enjoy bread that they couldn’t before. Would this give commercial bakers a new product line? To ask for a sample, email Carter at Carter.Wands@manildra.com.au.