Baking of muffins: Kinetics of crust color development and optimal baking time

Baking is a decisive stage in the production of bakery products, in general—muffins, in particular—for most of the quality attributes of the final products depend on it. The aim of this work is to model the kinetics of muffin crust color development during baking and to evaluate the feasibility of this kinetic model to predict the baking times. Surface color is represented by the Browning Index, and the effect of baking temperature (from 140 to 220 °C) and process convective characteristics (natural convection, forced convection, and steam-assisted forced convection) are analyzed. Minimal baking times are calculated from experimental core temperature measurements. The modeling of browning kinetics, which incorporates the optimal crust color determined by sensory analysis, allows the estimation of optimal baking times. For all the tested conditions t _op?>?t _min, assuring a product whose inner structure was already totally baked. Finally, minimal, half, and optimal baking times present an exponential dependence with the oven temperature. Besides, there are no significant differences between both forced convection modes.