Pitching A Loaf

Ah, shelf life. One of the most important, yet challenging aspects of baking. Dr. Lin Carson and Dave Dahl dive into the two sides of the shelf-life coin: inhibiting mold and fighting staling. Lin suggests using ingredients like sugar or honey to make bread softer longer, while also inhibiting mold. But baking time and temperature are also key, with a fine line between too much or not enough moisture. To find out more about reaching that optimal shelf life, Lin and Dave invite on Al Orr, vice president of sales and marketing at J&K Ingredients. Al explains how their Soft-Bake product line uses a mix of concentrated enzymes to address starch retrogradation. Can you trust enzymes in your formulation? Al has the answer. Moving on from extending shelf life, to extending the future of bread, Peter Reinhart stops by. America’s favorite bread guru and author of eight bread books, Peter discusses how a food over 6,000 years old must evolve to stay relevant, and what this means for the bread industry. It looks like