Staphylococcal Enterotoxin A Production and Inactivation in Bread during the Production Processes.

Staphylococcus aureus food poisoning is caused by the intoxication of staphylococcal enterotoxin (SE) produced in foods. Staphylococcal food poisoning is mostly due to staphylococcal enterotoxin type A (SEA) among SEs. There have been many studies on the growth and SEA production of S. aureus in various foods, but few studies in bread. Thus, the SEA production by S. aureus in dough during fermentation and the SEA inactivation in dough during baking were studied in the normal production processes of bread in this study. No growth of S. aureus or SEA production in dough, whose total weight was about 470 g, was observed during the fermentation at 25 and 35℃ for four hr, suggesting that the risk of SEA production in dough during fermentation under these conditions would be negligible. Any SEA injected at 6.0 and 0.56 ng/g in dough could not be detected after 20 and 10 min of baking at 200℃, respectively. These results showed that the baking process, which was completed in 25 min, was enough to inactivate SEA at those doses of SEA in the dough. The results on the production and inactivation of SEA in dough during the production processes in this study would be useful information on microbiological food safety of bread making.