Bread-Making Losses

Wahl says that bread-making losses are generally due to carbonic acid gaB and to volatile alcohols. He adds, The more rapid the fermentation phenomenon, and the longer the time, the greater will be the loss from this cause. Improvers may effect the properties of a loaf of bread, making it much more readily salable, thus these properties may be listed as follows ... 

The loss of dry bread substance during bread-making has been given by different authors as between 1.5 per cent to 11 per cent. As a general rule the loss increases the longer the fermentation. 

Deaths as the result of acute exposure by ingestion of endrin have been observed in humans in a variety of incidents. In 1967, in Doha, Qatar, and Hofuf in Saudi Arabia, 874 people were hospitalized after an acute exposure to endrin-contaminated flour which resulted in 26 known deaths (Weeks 1967). Deaths occurred within 12 hours of the onset of symptoms of toxicity (convulsions, loss of consciousness, headache, nausea, vomiting) however, recovery of survivors was rapid. Concentrations of endrin in bread eaten by victims ranged from 48 to 1,807 ppm (Curley et al. 1970). The contaminated flour used to make the bread contained 2,153-3,367 ppm endrin. 

It is not common to add vitamin E to cereals. Restoration of vitamin E losses during heating processes, such as extrusion, roller-drying and making bread, may be feasible. In the case of cereals and cereal products, tocopherols and tocotrienols are added as vitamins and not as antioxidants. 

The rise in popularity of frozen breads has been driven mainly by the economic attraction of centralized manufacturing and distribution and the practicality of consumption (Best, 1995). Nevertheless, frozen doughs still have presented problems such as dough weakening and loss of yeast viability and consequently decrease in CO2 retention during proofing and reduction of loaf volume (Casey and Foy, 1995 Ribotta et al., 2003. These problems could make the frozen product less acceptable than fresh bread. 

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