Changes in bread formulation can affect flavour and taste

Bread is one of britain’s most popular staple carbohydrates which is included in at least one of our daily meals. Today there is plenty of choice with sometimes more than one aisle dedicated to bread, with bakeries baking fresh bread on site in the supermarkets and prepacked commercial breads ready to be placed in our trolleys. There are extensive bread varieties available, with particular commercial breads having sweet varieties and savoury varieties.

Commercial bread making involves starting with a standard bread mixture and addition of different flavours to create different varieties.  Addition of new flavours to the ‘original recipe’ can sometimes affect the end result of the bread, for example a particular brand may have a unique taste that needs to be maintained.  With addition of ingredients for the different varieties of breads means the dough mixture sometimes is changed with regards to for example reducing salt or fat, and this can result in a difference in taste.  A sensory panel is used to detect any changes in taste compared to an original recipe. This is time consuming and expensive and our FlavourSpec system provides a rapid analytical approach to detect these flavour changes.