Checking
Checking in biscuits
Checking in biscuits are small cracks or hairlines, sometimes hardly visible. Problem appears mostly in short period after packaging, when opening a package and/or touching the product the biscuits will break; in developing products it will occur during cooling stage as well. Mainly with hard sweet biscuits and enzyme modified crackers and possible with rotary moulded biscuits, extruded and sheeted/ laminated biscuits or crackers.
Probable causes
Very often it starts in the batch size, where either ingredients could vary (e.g. flour) or that due to the changing conditions certain adjustment are made, such as water levels or temperature. Also it could have to do with how and in what condition the return dough is being reprocessed.
Certain conditions facilitate the hairlines, such as higher protein levels, certain sugar replacers or in the case of sheeting the molding design in combination with the return dough web.
Solution direction
Research has shown that the result is very often an uneven distribution of amongst other moisture inside the biscuit or cracker and on the other hand the hydrophilic behaviour of another part. Solutions could lie in changing leavening systems, flour/ starch ratios, but also conditions as introducing dough relaxation, slower cooling, changing oven belt, sometimes in combination with slower baking at lower temperatures or introduce an enzyme.
Need to know more? Feel free to contact us!
Bakery Articles
Our scientific bakery articles offer in-depth insights, detailed analyses, and expert perspectives, providing a wealth of information beyond standard blogs.
Since in 2002 acrylamide was discovered as a carcinogenic, more and more research has been done and solutionspresented. From our consulting and develo...
Shelf life
Nowadays, shelf life is such an important requirement, it should be of interest to everyone involved in the food chain. There is a growing realization...
Fats are among those raw materials that play a significant role in the quality of many bakery products but also require technological expertise in the...