The secret of good bread revealed by French researchers

2024-03-07 14:13:12

What if the secret to good bread, with a well-aerated crumb, was just a few grams of water? French researchers from INRAE have succeeded in unraveling the mystery of successful bread a little better, by precisely quantifying the water transfers taking place in the dough during baking.

We could imagine that in France, land of the baguette, we know all the secrets of good bread. And yet, there are no studies on the biochemical phenomena that control the transformation of dough into crumb. So how do you always get a crispy baguette with a well-aerated crumb? This is the question that researchers from INRAE in Rennes have just answered.

Measuring the dynamics of water molecules during cooking

Their results, published on February 27, 2024 in the Journal of food engineering, show that to make good bread, everything depends on the right dosage of water at the start and on the baking temperature. Even if these data could be guessed empirically, this is the first time that researchers have confirmed it in such detail.

Using a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) measuring device – a sort of mini Medical MRI – and a small piece of bread dough, Tiphaine Lucas, scientist at INRAE in Rennes, and her team were able to precisely follow the dynamics of water molecules in the bread dough cooking when cooking at 200°C.

Traditional analysis methods require interruption of the cooking process, followed by cutting in the open air – with the risk of generating significant experimental errors. “We have succeeded in developing a methodology for quantifying the water content locally in bread dough, applicable throughout the process… it is extremely atypical!“, entrusted to Science and Future Tiphaine Lucas.

Using this technique, the researchers were able to observe in real time, without altering the samples, the transfer of water inside the dough. Thus, hitherto unexplored molecular dynamics are revealed.