Testing Dough Stickiness in Quality Control or Product Development

Texture analysis is necessary in the baking industry in order to maintain the quality of cakes, bread and other baked goods. The key to producing a quality bakery product is to prepare a good dough with an appropriate amount of stickiness and hardness. If the dough is too sticky, it might adhere to mixing equipment and result in poor quality and yields. Similarly, a very hard dough might impact the quality of the finished good. In order to measure the dough hardness and stickiness, a texture analyser can provide the measure of the relevant properties just in a single test. Such tests allow producers to experiment with the ingredient ratios, asses baking times and determine optimum production methods, based on the test parameters. These tests also help in correlating any measured data against human sensory panels as a final check. On achieving an ideal profile, the product can be further sent for rapid testing in Quality Control.

Texture analyser consist of special jigs to assess dough roll out and special knife blade attachments to test dough springiness, crust hardness and even check for air pockets or other constituents.  The standard system includes the base machine, a drip tray, food testing base and probe for routine entry-level applications. The hardness of the dough can be measured by compressing a flat-ended probe against the dough. To measure the degree of stickiness, the withdrawal stroke of the same probe can be measured, that too in one test. A reading measurement to within +/-0.5% and a speed accuracy lower than 0.2% can be achieved with the texture analyser, which comes with analysis software equipped with a vast library of tests in accordance to the international manufacturing standards compliance.

Related Product: TA1 texture Analyser