Bake.IMPACT

The goal of this international project is to optimize and stimulate implementation of existing and emerging technologies for extending the shelf life of bakery products. In the first place, the applicability and effectiveness of innovative decontamination technologies will be studied for bakery products: intensive light pulses (ILP), novel UV sources and gas plasma technology. The project will provide an answer to following questions:

• to what extend micro-organisms can be killed on this food matrix and how long can shelf life be extended
• are there any side effects on product quality
• for which bakery products are these techniques suitable/profitable
• which process parameters have to be selected upon implementation in an industrial bakery plant.

In the second place, modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) will be optimized as a storage technique for bakery products. A lot of bakery products have a porous structure. As a consequence, during packaging not all air present in the product is replaced by the gas mixture. Often the desired gas composition is not reached in the headspace immediately after packaging. In addition, the gas composition can evolve and deviate increasingly from the desired composition during storage. MAP will be optimized for bakery products by quantifying gas transport through the product. This is done by measuring the product microstructure by X-ray tomography. Then, the packaging technique will be matched with this gas transport, as investigated in a number of packaging and storage experiments. This will result in a series of "best practice rules" for companies, explaining which process parameters have to be selected. In the third place, it will be investigated whether synergistic effects can be obtained when both decontamination and optimized MAP are applied simultaneously. The joint research project will deliver a Best Practice Guide compiling all answers and best practices worked out for the investigated technologies.