Conservation of Bakery Products Through Cinnamaldehyde Antimicrobial Films

In this study, an antimicrobial film containing cinnamaldehyde was developed to pack bread and pastry made without preservatives. These products were wrapped with the antimicrobial films and packaged in low‐density polyethylene bags. The antimicrobial activity of the films, the migration of the cinnamaldehyde in the films to the products and product acceptance by consumers were evaluated. Samples of bread and pastry packaged with films without the antimicrobial were used as controls. When samples of bread packaged with the cinnamaldehyde films were analysed, the films were found to be effective in inhibiting the growth of aerobic mesophiles, yeast and mould. The control sample was observed to have twice as much growth (four log cycles) compared with the other treatments after 12 days of storage. After 60 days, the samples of pastry dough showed a reduction of two and three log cycles of growth for aerobic mesophiles and Staphylococcus spp. for the 5 and 10% films, respectively. However, the amounts of yeast and mould in samples packed in either 5 or 10% antimicrobial films did not increase over the storage period. In all evaluations, water activity did not influence the microbiological results. The content of cinnamaldehyde that migrated from the film (5%) to the pastry dough and bread were 0.005 g/g and 0.0025 g/g, respectively, after 3 days of storage at 23 ± 2 °C. This amount of the antimicrobial influenced the acceptance of the pastry dough compared with the control but did not influence the acceptance of the bread, possibly due to the smaller amount of cinnamaldehyde detected in samples of bread in relation to the samples of pastry dough. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.