Orrù Elisabetta, Lodi Matteo B, Lodi Luca
Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, Via Marengo 2, 09123 Cagliari, Italy.
Department of Economics and Management, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Via delle Pandette 32, 50127 Firenze, Italy.
Foods. 2025 Mar 27;14(7):1177. doi: 10.3390/foods14071177.
Carasau bread (CB) is a traditional Sardinian flatbread with significant market potential, driving the need for advanced quality monitoring solutions in its production. Recent advancements in automation and engineering have enhanced process control, but a comprehensive understanding of CB dough properties remains essential. Dielectric spectroscopy (DS), particularly in the microwave (MW) range, has emerged as a non-destructive, cost-effective tool for food characterization, providing insights into microstructure and composition. MW DS has been applied to assess fermentation dynamics and ingredient influence in CB doughs, with previous studies modeling dielectric properties using a third-order Cole-Cole model up to 8.5 GHz and later extending to 20 GHz. Despite these advancements, the repeatability, reliability, and consistency of MW DS measurements on CB doughs have not been systematically assessed. This study aims to fill this gap by analyzing MW DS measurements on ten CB dough samples with standard composition (water 50%, yeast 1.5%, salt 1.5%) in the 0.5-6 GHz range, both before and after leavening, for 10 different samples and a total of 100 measurements. Even though the correlation between spectra is high, and even if the coefficient of variation is below 5% before leavening, the z-score analysis and the kernel density estimation highlighted that the distribution of dielectric data is heterogeneous, showing that variability across samples exists, especially after leavening. Finally, the influence of pressure, temperature, and relative humidity was excluded. This statistical evaluation of MW DS measurement provided critical insights into the robustness of MW DS for industrial applications.
卡拉索面包（CB）是一种传统的撒丁岛扁平面包，具有巨大的市场潜力，这促使其生产过程中需要先进的质量监测解决方案。自动化和工程领域的最新进展增强了过程控制，但全面了解CB面团的特性仍然至关重要。介电谱（DS），特别是在微波（MW）范围内，已成为一种用于食品表征的无损、经济高效的工具，可提供有关微观结构和成分的见解。MW DS已被应用于评估CB面团中的发酵动力学和成分影响，先前的研究使用三阶科尔 - 科尔模型对高达8.5 GHz的介电特性进行建模，后来扩展到20 GHz。尽管有这些进展，但尚未系统评估MW DS对CB面团测量的重复性、可靠性和一致性。本研究旨在通过分析在0.5 - 6 GHz范围内对十个具有标准成分（水50%、酵母1.5%、盐1.5%）的CB面团样品在发酵前后进行的MW DS测量来填补这一空白，共涉及10个不同样品和总共100次测量。尽管光谱之间的相关性很高，并且在发酵前变异系数低于5%，但z分数分析和核密度估计突出表明介电数据的分布是不均匀的，表明样品之间存在变异性，尤其是在发酵后。最后，排除了压力、温度和相对湿度的影响。MW DS测量的这种统计评估为MW DS在工业应用中的稳健性提供了关键见解。
