The market need for frozen dough

With a total annual consumption of 140 Million Tons (MT) per annum, bread is a key ingredient of our diet. The bread industry is evolving with global changes and despite a small per capita decrease in global bread consumption, there are still major growth opportunities in the baking industry. Frozen dough, where after dough preparation, the dough is stabilized by freezing until the moment bread is baked, provides one of those opportunities.

Frozen dough presents unique market opportunities, but also has its own application challenges. In this paper, we will focus on the application challenges encountered in the production of frozen dough, sometimes also referred to as unfermented or unproofed frozen dough which could result in a poorer shape, a coarser crumb structure and most importantly, a lower volume of the baked goods. In this paper, we focus on the impacts of yeast activity and insufficient gluten network strength as probable causes of these challenges, and ways to overcome these challenges with baking enzymes.