Food bulking agent makes your bread soft and tasty

Food bulking agent is a food additive that increases food volume or weight of food keeping its utility or functionality intact. It only increases the bulk of food and does not affect its nutritional value. Some common bulking agents are soluble fibres like guar gum and psyllium husk. And Canada approved powdered cellulose as a bulking agent for sweet baked dry mixes. Part of the original report is as follows:

Health Canada's Food Directorate completed a detailed safety assessment of the use of powdered cellulose as a bulking agent in dry mixes for sweet baked goods.

    Cellulose, powdered is already permitted for use in Canada as a bulking agent in various foods, including sweet baked goods.

    As no safety concerns were raised through this assessment, the Department has enabled the food additive use described in the information document by the List of Permitted Food Additives with Other Generally Accepted Uses, effective August 1, 2014.

There are two main types of the daily use bulking agent: the biological agent (yeast) and the chemical agent.

Yeast is a very important bulking agent in flour products. It can not only make product volume expansion, the organization was sponge like, but also can improve the flavor and nutritional value of the products.

Alkaline leavening agent, mainly sodium bicarbonate produces carbon dioxide. Acid is acceptable and generated in the process of carbon dioxide in the process of the formation of alkaline salt, and adjust the production speed of carbon dioxide. Such as starch has the effect of keeping the leavening agent to preserve, adjusting the gas production rate, making the air bubbles can be evenly distributed.

Compound bulking agent has a lot of formulations, and according to the specific food production need to be different. Usually by the use of different acidic substances, the gas production rate is different. Such as the acidic material are organic acid or calcium hydrogen phosphate, the reaction of producing gas is fast; while aluminum potassium sulfate, ammonium aluminum sulfate is slow to react, and they usually need to react at high temperature.

Bulking agent have a special role in the food manufacturing. Why your bread, cake and other food taste so soft? Because the spongy porous structure makes them have soft palate. When chewing the food, saliva quickly go into the organization to make the soluble substance exudes through the product and stimulate the sense of taste, then you can quickly sense the flavor of food. Besides, all kinds of digestive enzymes can quickly enter food organizations to make the food can be easily digested and absorbed when food enters the stomach, by the way, the nutritional will not loss.

Is it safe in use?

Actually a small amount of use is safe, so consumers should be alert some unscrupulous businessmen excessive use of bulking agent. Consumers need to carefully read the list of ingredients to understand the main ingredients of products and the usage of food additives.

Article source: http://okfoodadd.blogspot.com/2015/09/what-you-need-to-know-about-antioxidants.html.