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The American Institute of Baking and Texture Technologies Corp cooperated to produce a booklet with test methods for quantifying the texture of a variety of common baked goods. Texture Analysis procedures are presented for white pan breads, bagels, cake firmness, corn tortilla chips and tostada shells, cookies hardness, hamburger bun firmness, muffin firmness and elasticity, flour tortillas, and cinnamon rolls. These procedures are used at the American Institute of Baking's Experimental Bakery Lab in Manhattan, Kansas. Please visit the AIB's web site at http://www.aibonline.org to learn more about their courses and services. It is the philosophy of the researchers at the AIB to have extremely flexible protocols for texture testing. Bakery products come in every imaginable type and shape, so meaningful textural comparisons must account for the different product geometry's. Test procedures typically manage differences in geometry by reducing the products' size to a common denominator. |
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Generally, the objective of most of these tests is to measure the firmness and shelf life of a baked product. Since the bulk of these protocols address sample handling, they can and should be modified slightly if the test objective is different (eg springiness, cohesiveness, resilience, etc). The protocols described in the booklet are simply starting places for developing test methods which are suitable for your own products. A researcher should be comfortable modifying the sample handling protocols, test speeds and distances to accommodate any specific purposes. The probes described in the booklet are generally, but not exclusively, from Texture Technologies Corp, the North American distributor of the SMS' TA.XTPlus Texture Analyzer, software as well as related probes and attachments. To request a copy of the texture analysis procedures booklet, please contact either Marc Johnson at Texture Technologies or Brian Strouts at the American Institute of Baking, 1213 Bakers Way, PO Box 3999 Manhattan, Kansas 66505-3999, Tel 785-537-4750, Fax 787-537-1493 You may also follow this link to the AIB's web site where the procedures are available. |