Dados do Trabalho

Título

EFFECTS OF THE APPLICATION OF COLD PLASMA ON THE TECHNOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL-CHEMICAL QUALITY OF BREAD

Introdução

Bread is a widely consumed bakery product worldwide, whose main problem is fungal contamination. New technologies have been researched, in addition to chemical preservatives, that can act on this issue. Cold plasma is an emerging technology that is also being studied to act as an inhibitor of microorganisms, but its effects on other quality parameters of the product must also be understood.

Material e Métodos

Our work aimed to verify whether there is a change in different technological and physical-chemical parameters of sliced bread, such as moisture content, aw, texture, color, specific volume after the application of cold plasma at 125W power, 5Hz frequency, during 10 min on each side of the slice. Evaluations were made after 1, 3, 5 days of storage, and compared to standard bread, with preservatives - 0.50% calcium propionate and 0.01% potassium sorbate; and control bread, without preservatives or plasma. As the control bread presented spoilage on the fourth day of storage, only the standard bread and plasma bread were evaluated on the fifth day.

Resultados e Discussão

The aw showed no statistical difference between treatments on the three days of analysis. Plasma bread presented the second-highest moisture content on all days of analysis, only behind the standard bread. The firmness of plasma bread increased with storage time (3.88c±0.21, 5.49b±0.98, 9.73a±0.31N), while the standard bread had statistically higher firmness values than the other treatments (6.19b±0.17, 5.82b±0.49, 9.55c±0.32N) on days 1, 3, 5, respectively, except on the fifth day, when the two treatments did not differ statistically. These data correlate with the specific volume, evaluated only on the first day, in which the plasma bread and the standard bread presented, respectively, 4.62a±0.00, 2.81b±0.00cm3/g. Regarding color, plasma bread presented statistically higher values than the other two treatments for parameters a*, b* on the three days of analysis, corroborating the fact that the slices were visibly more yellowish.

Conclusão

It was concluded that, in terms of the quality characteristics evaluated, sliced bread applied with plasma was statistically very similar to bread with preservatives used in the market, which should be a relevant factor for the use of the technology in its effectiveness in microbiological inhibition.