What are bread improvers and why are they used?

What are bread improvers and why are they used?

The term ‘bread improver’ is used to embrace a wide range of materials that can be added to wheat flour and dough in order to improve some aspect of dough behaviour and final bread quality. The use of the term is common and most often applied to the addition of several ingredients at low levels blended with a ‘carier’ a material that may or may not have functional properties but that aids dispersion and provides a more conveniently handled composite material. The formulation of bread improvers will be influenced by legislative control over the list of permitted ingredients that may be used in breadmaking.

• Alternative names for bread improvers that may be encountered

• In the baking industry include ;

• Dough conditioners, a specific reference to that the material addition changes dought rhealogy.

• Procesing aids, that imples a similar function to dought conditioners.

• Oxidizing agents, that implies a more specific role concerned with the formation of the gluten network in the dought.

• Additives, more commonly applied to specific ingredients.

• Concentroes, similar to an improver but with a greater range of ingredients present (e.g fat, sugar and salt) and commonly used at higher rates of addition.

Almost any material added to a flour and water dough will have some improving effect. For example, the addition of east improves the lightness and palatability of bread, while salt changes the handling properties of wheat flour dough and the flour of the baked bread. However, the term bread improver is now commonly restricted to materials that are typically added at much lower levels of addition than yeast or salt with the intention of improving gas production or gas retention in the dough, retaining bread crumb softness and obtaining a whiter crumb colour.

Some of the more common ingredients used in bread improvers are noted bellow. The classification used is arbitrary since the complex action of most materials in breadmaking means that they might be classified in more that one group. For examples, addition of many enzyme preparations brings about chanes in dought rheology that makes it easier to process dought but also results in improved oven spring, a manifestation of improved gas restention.

• Aids to dough processing: enzyme-active preparation, e.g. malt flour, fungal α-amylase.

• Aids to gas production: yeast foods, such as ammonium chloride.

• Aids gas retention: oxidizing agents, such as ascorbic acid and potassium bromate.

• Aids to bread softness: e.g. glycerol monostearate (GMS).

• Aids to improving crumb colour: soya (soy) flour.