Continuous monitoring of dough fermentation and bread baking by magnetic resonance microscopy

The consumer quality of baked products is closely related with dough structure properties. These are developed during dough fermentation and finalized during its baking. In this study, magnetic resonance microscopy (MRM) was employed in a study of dough fermentation and baking. A small hot air oven was installed inside a 2.35-T horizontal bore superconducting magnet. Four different samples of commercial bread mixes for home baking were used to prepare small samples of dough that were inserted in the oven and allowed to rise at 33°C for 112 min; this was followed by baking at 180°C for 49 min. The entire process was followed by dynamic T₁-weighted 3D magnetic resonance imaging with 7 min of temporal resolution and 0.23×0.23×1.5 mm³ of spatial resolution. Acquired images were analyzed to determine time courses of dough pore distribution, dough volume and bread crust thickness. Image analysis showed that both the number of dough pores and the normalized dough volume increased in a sigmoid-like fashion during fermentation and decreased during baking due to the bread crust formation. The presented magnetic resonance method was found to be efficient in analysis of dough structure properties and in discrimination between different dough types.