Effect of chemical oxidizers and enzymatic treatments on the baking quality of doughs formulated with five Canadian spring wheat cultivars.

For many years, the baking industry has been using chemical improvers as a way for compensating for flour quality variation due to growing conditions or wheat cultivar. However, the replacement of chemical dough improvers with natural ingredients or processing aids (i.e. enzymes) allows for the production of 'cleaner label' products. In the present research, dough and bread properties (mixing time, oven rise, loaf volume, crumb firmness and C-cell parameters) were analysed as a function of wheat cultivar (Glenn, Harvest, Lillian, CDC Plentiful and Stettler), additive-type (ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, glucose oxidase and fungal xylanase) and concentration. Overall, the cultivar Glenn appeared to have improved baking performance relative to the other cultivars, regardless of the additive and additive concentration. On the other hand, Stettler showed poorer baking quality and performance even with the addition of oxidizers and enzymes in relation to the control. The concentration of additive was found to have little or no effect on improving baking properties within each cultivar. Enzymes had similar or better performance than oxidizers in most cases.