Chemically-leavened Cracker Baking Procedure

Developed by Meera Kweon,Research Food Technologist, Campbell Soup Corp

Background

Traditionally, the baking performance of soft wheat flours has been evaluated by well-established benchtop cookie-baking methods (e.g. AACC Approved Methods 10-52 and 10-53 (AACC International 2000)). In contrast, a benchtop cracker-baking method has not been widely explored or implemented as an official method, due to hurdles including the difficulty in finding ideal diagnostic flours and the absence of suitable benchtop equipment (e.g. powerful dough mixer, dough sheeter, multi-zone oven).

There are generally three major types of crackers: saltine, chemically- leavened, and savory. The typical processes preparing for saltine and savory crackers usually require about 24 hours, due to a prolonged fermentation time. In comparison, chemically -leavened crackers ordinarily do not require a fermentation step, and their processing is relatively easy and simple to manage. Development of a benchtop method for chemically-leavened crackers would enable one to use such a method as a predictive tool for evaluating gluten functionality in flour for crackers.

Soft wheat flours with greater gluten strength are typically preferred for commercial cracker production. The purpose of developing a benchtop baking method is to predict the contribution of gluten functionality to overall flour performance for chemically-leavened crackers.

Apparatus

1. Pin mixer (National Manufacturing Co.), with head speed of 102 rpm and a 100g flour batch dough bowl.
2. Dough sheeter (Model SFB 528, width of sheeting rolls, 19 5/8", Univex Corp., Salem, NH)
3. Hand cutter (2.25 x 1.65 in, 7 docker pins, Weidenmiller Co., Itasca, IL)
4. Baking mesh (cord-weave, 13L x 10W in, 0.26 in thickness, Hi Carbon Steel, spec. C-100-3F, Audubon, Feasterville, PA)
5. Baking (cooling) rack
6. Aluminum cookie baking sheet.
7. Baking oven, reel or rotary, electrically heated and capable of maintaining temperature of 500?F ? 5?).
8. Measuring calipers

Basic ingredients and formula

Mixing procedure

Stage 1:

1. Dissolve fine granulated sucrose in water to prepare a pre-dissolved sugar solution.
2. Weigh 38g of pre-dissolved sugar solution into a 100g pin mixer mixing bowl at room temperature and add ammonium bicarbonate to dissolve.
3. Add room temperature shortening.
4. Mix 1 min.

Stage 2:

1. Add pre-weighed flour, salt, sodium bicarbonate, and monocalcium phosphate.
2. Mix 10 min continuously.
3. Use dough to make a dough ball.

Sheeting procedure

1. Make a dough ball with hands, and flatten it for sheeting.
2. The sheeted dough is sheeted at dial setting "5" (5.59mm) of the Univex sheeter.
3. Change the sheeting direction knob to the opposite direction and sheet the dough at dial setting "3" (3.78mm).
4. Repeat step 3 three times with dial settings "2" (2.71mm), "1" (1.77mm), and 2nd smallest (0.54mm), sequentially.
5. The sheeted dough is rested for 1 min on the sheeter belt, and dough pieces are cut with a hand cutter (4 pieces of cracker dough) twice to prepare 8 pieces of cracker dough.
6. The 8 pieces of cracker dough are transferred to a cookie baking sheet, and total dough weight is measured before transferring the dough pieces to pre-heated baking mesh.

Baking procedure

• Oven temperature: set 500?F (260?C)
• Baking time: about 5-6 min (Target moisture: 2.75% (2.0-3.5%))

1. A cracker baking mesh is placed on the top of a baking (cooling) rack, and pre- heated in an oven for 5 min before sheeting dough.
2. Cut cracker dough pieces are placed on pre-heated baking mesh, and placed in an oven for baking.
3. Baked crackers are removed from the oven, and transferred to the cookie baking sheet to measure the cracker weight.
4. Moisture loss during baking is calculated.
5. Length, width and height are measured for 8 crackers, and the average length, width and height are reported.