Many approaches to evaluate bread crumb characteristics by applying free or at least not too expensive image analysis (IA) software have been published; however, the described procedures showed evident differences. The aim of this work was to compare different liquid bread improver constituents to quantify Barbari bread (an Iranian flat bread) crumb features (average size, area fraction, circularity, solidity, cell wall thickness and fractal dimension) in two cross-cuttings (longitudinal and transverse) and their interrelationship. A Box-Behnken with three improver constituents including sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, glycerol (SSL), and enzyme active soy flour (EASF) was selected to observe the effects on crumb image properties. The SSL ranged from 0 to 0.5 g/100g, glycerol from 0 to 4 g/100g, and EASF from 0 to 2 g/100g. A total of 15 runs of experiments where three levels attributed to each factor at high, central and low, and with additional three replicated center points were conducted. Although it was found some significant correlations between features of both cross-cuttings but experiments showed that the transverse cross-cutting has superior performance to investigate, approximate and predict a large number of bread properties.

Keywords