Combined heating techniques and use of susceptors for efficient baking of laminated dough structures

Abstract

Snack market is ever growing with a recorded sale of around €14 billion in Europe in the year 2014. This fuels the need for technological advancement of conventional processes to increase efficiency and to obtain nutritionally better products. A very popular and classic snack is puff pastry, which consists of a complex laminated structure with alternating dough and fat layers. Puff pastries are traditionally baked in convective ovens, where heat is transferred from the surface to the core of the product. The complex structure of this product creates a potential for investigation of microwave baking, during which heat penetrates to the core of the product directly and it is selectively transferred within the product depending on dielectric properties of the components. Thereby heat transfer during microwave baking is much more efficient as compared to the conventional convective method. This study focused on developing a baking process for puff pastry with assistance of combined dielectric and convective heating, simultaneously as well as consecutively in different stages. Additionally, the use of different metal susceptors was investigated in order to improve heat transfer at the bottom of the pastry during dielectric heating and thereby to boost product browning. The structure, process and product property relationship was established for optimization of the process. It was observed that the baking time could be reduced up to 5 times without compromising on organoleptic properties of the product. In conclusion, the developed combined microwave-convective baking process for complex laminated dough pastries allows significant reduction of baking time and a final product quality comparable to the traditional baking process.