IPB Researchers Utilize Ascorbic Acid to Repair the Characteristics of Wheat Flour on Sweet Bread
Bread is one of the most popular processed products liked by the community. Bread is made of wheat flour through fermentation process using yeast. Most Indonesian people prefer the consumption of sweet bread which has a sweet taste and soft texture and is filled by various fillings with varied shapes.
The quality of bread produced is generally influenced by the raw materials used and the processing process. One of the common raw materials used in making bread is wheat flour. This flour contains protein in the form of gluten that plays a role in determining the food elasticity. Gluten is the main protein in wheat flour consisting of gliadin and glutenin.
The growth of the bread industry in Indonesia will increase in line with the increase of the bread consumption. Each bread industry encourages production efficiency efforts, one of which is by pressing the price of raw materials used. Generally, wheat flour used contains high level of gluten, so it has a more expensive price compared to wheat flour with medium and low gluten levels.
This is what underlies researchers from Bogor Agricultural University (IPB), Dr. Nur Wulandari, along with a student of the Department of Food Science and Technology, Faculty of Agricultural Technology of IPB, Karina Garnovelly Kurnia, to make an innovation to improve the characteristics of wheat flour with medium gluten content through the addition of ascorbic acid in the production of sweet bread.
The physical characteristics of the bread made of wheat flour with medium gluten content can be corrected with ascorbic acid. This is because ascorbic acid acts as an oxidant of gluten-producing protein group, thereby, it can improve the dough rheological properties as well as increase the dough strength by producing larger bread volumes.
To obtain the best characteristics of sweet bread, the characterizations of wheat flour, dough (including colour and dough sensory characters) and sweet bread were done. The treatment used was by mixing ascorbic acid at concentrations of 10-50 ppm with 500 grams of wheat flour with medium gluten content (32 percent).
The results showed that the best treatment was by adding 30 ppm of ascorbic acid. This treatment was able to provide better volume and sensory characters of the sweet bread than the one made of wheat flour with high gluten content. (TK)
