Natural ingredients for crispier creations — Crunch time

When it comes to crisp baked goods such as wafers, the sound while eat­ing is key to con­sumer accep­tance. And that’s because per­cep­tion of prod­uct qual­i­ty, and even taste, are close­ly con­nect­ed to acoustics. To demon­strate how cal­ci­um car­bon­ate can eas­i­ly improve mouth­feel with­out neg­a­tive­ly impact­ing taste, Omya car­ried out a sound analy­sis which showed a clear cor­re­la­tion between audi­ble crisp­ness and the con­tent of Omya Cal­cipur in a wafer.

Autonomous Sen­so­ry Merid­i­an Response (ASMR) is on the rise: This trend high­lights the link between pleas­ant joy­ful feel­ings and spe­cif­ic audi­to­ry and visu­al stim­uli. With Muk­bang, Kore­an con­sumers per­fect­ly illus­trate ASMR by pub­lish­ing clips on social media to doc­u­ment the record­ing of spe­cial eat­ing expe­ri­ences. And this trend is the per­fect oppor­tu­ni­ty to explore how Omya Cal­cipur can help sup­port appeal­ing – and audi­ble – crispness.

As a real all-rounder suit­able for dif­fer­ent tech­ni­cal process­es, Omya Cal­cipur has a pos­i­tive impact on not only health but also sen­so­ry qual­i­ties, mouth­feel and colour in numer­ous appli­ca­tions. When used in snacks and cere­als, the par­ti­cles pro­vide bet­ter extru­sion and inten­si­fy the per­cep­tion of salty or sweet tastes. A tri­al with baked wafers has revealed how a spe­cif­ic amount of Omya Cal­cipur can reduce the mass of the wafer by low­er­ing mois­ture con­tent due to increased heat trans­fer, ulti­mate­ly result­ing in a crispi­er end prod­uct. The high­er ther­mal con­duc­tiv­i­ty of Omya Cal­cipur com­pared to flour can be advan­ta­geous for man­u­fac­tur­ers as it allows for a reduc­tion in cook­ing time. Mea­sure­ments tak­en dur­ing the tri­al were weight, tex­ture analy­sis, mois­ture con­tent and food con­sump­tion nois­es. Wafers con­tain­ing three dif­fer­ent amounts of cal­ci­um car­bon­ate (0 per­cent, 1 per­cent and 1.5 per­cent were pre­pared in a norm­ing process, cut into squares of 55 x 55 mil­lime­ter and their weight mea­sured. A com­bi­na­tion of force mea­sure­ment and acoustic detec­tion was used to assess crisp­ness, using an Acoustic Enve­lope Detec­tor (AED) and a Tex­ture Analyzer.

Crisp­ness was defined by the num­ber of sound peaks detect­ed dur­ing the struc­tur­al break­down of the wafer. The tex­ture analy­sis proved that the firm­ness of the wafer was not affect­ed by adding cal­ci­um car­bon­ate: the max­i­mum force referred to the hard­ness of the wafer, which stayed con­stant. The sound analy­sis demon­strat­ed that the addi­tion of cal­ci­um car­bon­ate sig­nif­i­cant­ly ele­vat­ed the num­ber of peaks and thus the crisp­ness of the wafers. The addi­tion of 1 per­cent cal­ci­um car­bon­ate enhanced the num­ber of peaks by 29 per­cent, while 1.5 per­cent addi­tion of cal­ci­um car­bon­ate result­ed in a 48 per­cent increase.

Rena­ta Negri­ni, Tech­ni­cal Ser­vice Man­ag­er Food, at Omya, says: “Eat­ing as a means of well­be­ing is as old as time, but in a world of mass con­sump­tion it’s more impor­tant than ever for man­u­fac­tur­ers to cre­ate prod­ucts that stand out from the crowd. Here, Omya Cal­cipur is key, as it’s an ingre­di­ent that not only helps opti­mise for­mu­la­tions and pro­duc­tion process, but is also nat­ur­al and healthy.”