Boosting Bread Quality with Emulsifiers and Fungal Amylase

Date:2025-08-20

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For bakeries and industrial manufacturers, producing soft, fresh bread while controlling costs and ensuring consistency is a challenge. Emulsifiers and fungal amylase play a key role in meeting these needs.

The Role of Emulsifiers in Bread Making

Food emulsifiers are multifunctional ingredients that improve both dough handling and final bread characteristics. Common emulsifiers used in bread include:

Distilled Monoglycerides (DMG, E471): Retards staling, improves crumb softness.

Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate (SSL, E481): Strengthens gluten network, enhances gas retention.

Calcium Stearoyl Lactylate (CSL, E482): Provides improved dough tolerance and volume.

Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Mono- and Diglycerides (DATEM, E472e): Strengthens gluten, improves dough stability, and loaf volume.

Polysorbate 80 (Tween, E433): Enhances crumb softness, extends freshness, and improves moisture retention.

How emulsifiers improve bread:

Gluten strengthening: Better dough elasticity and stability during mixing and fermentation.

Gas retention: Improved volume and uniform crumb structure.

Anti-staling effect: Interacts with starch molecules to keep bread softer for longer.

Emulsifiers in Bread

The Role of Fungal Amylase in Bread

Fungal amylase is an enzyme that breaks down starch into smaller sugar molecules during dough fermentation and baking.

Benefits of fungal amylase in bread:

Improved fermentation: Fungal amylase breaks down starch into fermentable sugars, providing yeast with more food, boosting gas production, dough expansion, and loaf volume.

Enhanced crumb and crust: More available sugars improve browning through the Maillard reaction, creating a more open and airy crumb structure.

Delayed staling: By reducing starch retrogradation, fungal amylase helps maintain bread's softness and freshness for a longer period.

Clean label and cost-effectiveness: Often classified as a processing aid, it supports clean-label claims while improving flour consistency and reducing reliance on costly flour improvers.

The Synergy: Emulsifiers + Fungal Amylase

While emulsifiers and fungal amylase each improve bread quality on their own, together they deliver a synergistic effect: Emulsifiers stabilize gluten and reduce staling. Fungal amylase increases loaf volume and maintains softness. Combined, they create bread that is softer, fresher, and more resilient, ideal for packaged bread with extended shelf-life requirements. This synergy is especially valuable for industrial bakeries producing packaged bread that must remain appealing across supply chains and retail environments.

Industrial Applications

The combination of emulsifiers and fungal amylase is widely used in:

Commercial pan bread – improved softness and longer freshness.

Frozen dough products – better tolerance during freezing and thawing.

Whole wheat and multigrain breads – enhanced loaf volume despite weaker gluten.

Artisan and clean-label breads – with natural emulsifiers like lecithin.

Emulsifiers and fungal amylase in wheat bread

Emulsifiers and fungal amylase in wheat bread

Choosing the Right Combination

The ideal blend depends on bread type and production method:

High-speed industrial baking: SSL + fungal amylase for maximum volume and consistency.

Artisan or clean-label bread: DMG + fungal amylase, or natural emulsifiers such as lecithin.

Frozen bakery products: CSL + fungal amylase to improve dough tolerance during storage.

Enriched and specialty breads: DATEM + fungal amylase to strengthen gluten and improve dough elasticity.

Soft, moist bakery items: Polysorbate 80 + fungal amylase to enhance crumb softness and extend freshness.

Final Thoughts

By combining emulsifiers and fungal amylases, bakeries can improve dough properties and enhance the overall quality of the bread. Looking for reliable emulsifiers and enzymes for bread production? Chemsino offers high-quality food ingredients and technical support at competitive prices. Contact us today for a free sample.

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