Baking & Snack - April 2014 - 24

AZODICARBONAMIDE

"Every minute a dough is out
on the floor has a cost,
so longer fermentations may
mean greater cost.
"

Julie M. Jones, PhD., St. Catherine's University
cated appropriate low-level use in products," it said. "As
a dough conditioner, it has a volume/texture effect on
the finished loaf. It is a functional ingredient that improves the quality of bread, and any substitutes are likely
not to work as well as ADA."
The association cautioned members that usage rates
are limited by FDA to 0.0045%, flour weight basis (45
ppm), and that if used, its presence is required to be
disclosed on product labeling. It recommended the information resources provided by the Center for Food
Integrity (CFI) and asked that members contact ABA
for additional follow up.

Why use ADA?

Food critics decry use
of the GRAS dough
conditioner ADA in sub
and hoagie buns ... and
other baked foods.
Shutterstock

The Standards of Identity for bread and rolls (21 CFR
136) list approved oxidizers to be potassium bromate,
calcium bromate, potassium iodate, calcium iodate
and calcium peroxide - all at maximum use levels of
75 ppm based on flour. Also permitted are dehydro-Lascorbic acid, added in the form of ascorbic acid at an
unrestricted level, and azodicarbonamide at a maximum level of 45 ppm.
Why do bakers need flour maturing agents, or oxidizers, at all?
A bit of history throws light on the problem. Early on,
bakers learned that wheat flour,

when left to sit for a while after milling and before baking, produced finished baked foods with substantially
improved overall quality. Bakers received their flour in
wooden barrels or fabric bags, containers that were not
airtight. In the time it took for flour to reach the bakery, it was exposed to oxygen in the atmosphere, and
that oxygen acted on the flour's proteins to adjust their
performance.
When safer, more sanitary and more secure means
of shipping flour came along - multiwall paper sacks,
sealed tote bins, bulk tank trucks and railroad tanker
cars - flour got to the bakery not only more quickly but
also with far less exposure to atmospheric oxygen. Long
periods of onsite storage can compensate for natural oxidation; however, the required time and storage space to
allow freshly milled, "green" flour to age naturally made
it economically unattractive to modern bakers.
That's when chemical oxidizers entered the picture.
They could do the job at relatively low cost and in very
small amounts.
Much speculation, theorizing and research still revolves around how oxidizers work to improve the breadmaking quality of wheat flour. Some scientists say these
compounds inhibit native proteases, an activity termed
"the bromate effect" during the late 1930s. Others said
they oxidize the thiols that would otherwise soften the
dough or by aiding the interchange between thiols and
disulfide bonds in proteins. Still others claimed they
affect protein aggregation or foster enzyme catalysis of
ascorbic acid to act as a reducing agent.
A simpler explanation is that use of flour maturing
agents, or oxidizers, shortens the required fermentation time and produces bread with a finer cell structure,
which makes the crumb appear whiter.

Past and future options
In the 1980s, potassium
bromate came under
scrutiny
like

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