Crust treatments to reduce bread staling

Crust treatments, namely edible bread coatings, enzymatic crust modification and chemical crust modification, were introduced with the intention to minimize bread water loss during ambient storage. It was observed that compared to the treated bread, the untreated bread had significantly higher weight loss and crumb firmness after 14 days of ambient storage. A large array of materials was tested, among which hydrophobic coatings were shown to have the highest moisture barrier efficiency. In particular, the 20% candelilla wax coating (solution of 20% candelilla wax in sunflower oil), 20% beeswax coating (solution of 20% beeswax in sunflower oil) and HPMC oleogel coating (coating containing hydroxypropyl methyl cellulose oleogel) were proved to be most effective, thanks to their low affinity with water and low water vapor permeability. The application of the 20% candelilla wax coating resulted in reductions of the bread weight loss from about 30 to 13% and the crumb firmness from above 500 to 34 ​N after a storage period of 14 days. In addition, it was noted that the enzymatic and chemical crust modifications yielded moderately good results, but showed a significantly altered appearance of the bread crust.