Knowledge of fermentation dynamics allows for reducing sugar levels in yeast-leavened pastry

Many food companies try to reduce the sugar content in their products. For yeasted cereal-based products, knowledge about the sugar production and consumption dynamics during processing, including sucrose hydrolysis, and its impact on product quality is key in achieving this. We showed before that in fermented pastry, sucrose is entirely hydrolysed into glucose and fructose by yeast invertase and that the contribution to sweetness of glucose, partly consumed by yeast, is negligible compared to that of fructose. Therefore, this study investigated the possibility of using fructose instead of sucrose in fermented pastry to decrease end product total sugar content. Fermentation dynamics, product height and sweetness factor were compared for recipes with 14% sucrose, 14% fructose and 10% fructose (dry matter flour base). Sucrose replacement had a small impact on fermentation dynamics and no significant impact on product height. Fermented pastry samples made with 10% fructose did not have significantly more fructose in the end product than those made with 14% sucrose. Moreover, samples made with 10% fructose had the same sweetness factor as samples made with 14% sucrose, while the end product contained 33% less sugar. It would be interesting to explore these findings in other fermented high-sugar bakery products.