Study of the Effect of Baking Mechanism on the Quality Characteristic of Flatbread

Bread is one of the main categories of food in Iran that supply daily calorie, protein. Lavash flatbread consisted about 34% of total flatbreads produced in Iran. Large quantities of bread are wasted every year because bread production technology and baking methods. The main objective of this study was to evaluate the flatbread quality produced by the developed bread baking machine with an indirect heating system and the existing conventional machines with a direct heating system. Bread baking experiments were conducted and the instrumental, sensory, and staling characteristics of the produced flatbreads was evaluated. The effect of baking methods and storage time on the quality of bread was significant and the bread produced with the indirect heating system had higher rating compared to the bread produced from the conventional industrial machines with direct heating and its shelf life was longer. In the indirect heating machine, there was acceptable uniformity on the baking bed as view point of heat distribution and baking uniformity. The variation of puncher force of 10 mm probe in the 5 layers of bread indicated that the surface firmness of bread increased after 48 h of storage. In addition, in the first days of storage, no differences was observed in the puncher force of bread produced by two machines but during the storage, the firmness of breads produced by indirect heating machine was lower as compared with direct heating machine. Also, bread prepared using the new machine was free of any contaminants such as PAHs.