Modeling Maillard Reaction and Thermal Transformations During Bread Baking

D. Papasidero[1], F. Manenti[1]
[1]Politecnico di Milano, Dipartimento di Chimica, Materiali e Ingegneria Chimica “Giulio Natta”, Milano, Italy
Published in 2013

One big challenge for the food industry is to predict and optimize flavors. The Maillard reaction occurs in food matrices containing carbohydrates and proteins under specific operating conditions. The presented research couples thermal and kinetic modeling to the bread baking process, an ideal field to study this complex set of reactions responsible for many bread flavors. The thermal model considers forced convection and variable thermal properties for the bread material (dough to crumb and crust transition). The Maillard kinetics is taken from a work of (Jousse, 2002).

The preliminary results reproduce the oven and bread thermal behavior, and show a prediction of the flavor compounds development. As an assumption, only the thermal aspects for the bread baking kinetics are considered.