Keeping The Crunch

The key to maintaining a bread crust’s crispiness is in the water content, according to scientists whose progress in understanding the process could help prolong the crunch.
An article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry by researchers from the Netherlands shows that both water activity, which determines the direction of water migration, and water content have an effect on the perceived crispiness of bread.
However, the study was able to investigate the water content and water activity separately and found that water content is perhaps more significant than water activity.
“The water content of the crust was found to be decisive for the transition point,” wrote the study’s authors.
“The distribution of the water in samples with a history of high water content is more inhomogeneous, which results in crispy and less crispy regions, thus making them overall more crispy than samples with the same water content but higher water activity.”
Discovering techniques to maintain a crust’s crispiness could help extend the shelf life. By modifying these factors, the researchers said, bakers can improve bread ingredients to produce crisper, longer-lasting crusts for bread products, and this could also mean less need for introducing artificial preservatives, which are increasingly unwanted my consumers.