Rheological behaviour of formulated bread doughs during mixing and heating

During breadmaking different physicochemical phenomena occur producing discernible changes in the theological properties. Traditionally, these changes have been studied with equipments controlling separately the mixing step and the baking process. The MIXOLAB is a new apparatus which measures torque when bread dough is subjected to a dual mixing and temperature constraint. It was the aim of this study to compare this new tool with other available methodologies in order to explore its use as a suitable technique for determining bread dough theological properties. A broad range of correlations was found, not only within parameters derived from the MIXOLAB, but also with standard methods as the pasting method performed by the Rapid Visco Analyser, the gluten index and uni- and bi-axial extensional measurements. The use of MIXOLAB has also allowed the identification of the influence of design factors (flour and exogenous enzymes) on the theological properties. These results confirm MIXOLAB as a promising tool for the theological assessment of bread dough.