Continuous monitoring of bread dough fermentation using a 3D vision Structured Light technique

Fermentation of the dough is an important phase in the bread-making process which is affected by several important factors related to raw materials and processing. Changes in fermentation affect parameters in the final product, such as texture, palatability and general quality. For this reason, it is important to develop dynamic methods to study this phase. In this work, a 3D vision system based on Structured Light (SL) was used to monitor the fermentation phase. The evolution of the dough was studied employing 10 wheat flours with non-physicochemical and rheological differences. However, differences in dough behaviors during fermentation were found based on SL method parameters. When the variation of the total transversal area was related to the maximum height at each fermentation time a set of peaks and valleys appeared. These sets were directly related to the fermentation capacity. Specifically, a lower number of peaks during the main fermentation time (100 min) is related to wheat flours with high fermentation capacity. Consequently, the proposed SL Technique could be used as a method to check the fermentation capacity of wheat flours according to their fermentation behavior.We thank the Polytechnic University of Valencia and Generalitat Valenciana for the financial support provided (PAID-05-011-2870 and 226 GVPRE/2008/170 projects, respectively)Ivorra Martínez, E.; Verdú Amat, S.; Sánchez Salmerón, AJ.; Barat Baviera, JM.; Grau Meló, R. (2014). Continuous monitoring of bread dough fermentation using a 3D vision Structured Light technique. Journal of Food Engineering. 130:8-13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfoodeng.2013.12.03181313