Texture design of Breaded and Battered Foods

Batters and breadings provide value added visual, textural and sensory appeal to a variety of food products.

Deep fat or immersion frying is one of the common food processing systems used worldwide. Frying helps to set the coating and provides additional flavour and texture to the coated product. Designing the texture of breaded and battered foods takes into consideration several important factors known to affect the final food quality. 

Important parameters include ingredients selection, employment of appropriate processes, packaging and storage or product handling after preparation or cooking. Texture design also takes into account the physicochemical effect of the process on the ingredients to achieve the desired food microstructure and hence product texture.     

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'Texture design for breaded and battered foods' is a really interesting chapter in the book 'Food Texture Design and Optimization', which discusses the texture design for breaded and battered foods. It mentions use of the TA.XTplus Texture Analyser for texture measurement:

Find out more about the book...

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The Kramer Shear Cell fitted to 
the TA.XTplus

One of the best ways we have been able to quantify the texture of these types of products is using the Kramer Shear Cell. The difficulty lies in the testing of a product which is variable in size and shape. Testing the product ‘in bulk’ (i.e. a known number of pieces) creates an averaging effect, which presents itself as the most accurate way of testing a product of this nature.

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Latest developments in Bread products

Meanwhile, researchers at a company in Japan have been using their Texture Analyser in a patent entitled ‘Breads having novel physical properties and method of producing the same’. 

The number of people preferring breads is increasing among people having impaired chewing or swallowing functions – for example, aged people. A person without sufficiently working chewing or swallowing functions, such as during illness or recovering from illness, a person with an aftereffect from illness, or an infant in the weaning period may also desire to eat breads. 

However, chewing bread causes tissues and structure forming bread to cohere and form a solid lump having tendency to adhere to the inside the oral cavity and the throat. Breads tend to draw moisture in the oral cavity and therefore have a problem that makes it difficult to chew or swallow. To solve such problems, various bread-like foods invention having the same appearance, texture, flavour, etc., as normal bread and having novel physical properties, but facilitating chewing or swallowing, have recently been developed.

Find out more about the patent...

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The TA.XTplus texture analyser is part of a family of texture analysis instruments and equipment from Stable Micro Systems. An extensive portfolio of specialist attachments is available to measure and analyse the textural properties of a huge range of food products. Our technical experts can also custom design instrument fixtures according to individual specifications.

No-one understands texture analysis like we do!

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