Ready-to-use long conservation baker's leaven

Details Ready-to-use long conservation baker's leaven Ready-to-use long conservation baker's leaven

1999-04-15

2002-10-15

Hendricks, Keith (Department: 1761)

Food or edible material: processes, compositions, and products

Dormant ferment containing product, or live microorganism...

C426S062000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06465027

ABSTRACT:

FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The invention relates to a baker's leaven or sourdough which retains, during several weeks, at low temperature, all its properties for the fermentation of the dough of a leavened bread or sourdough bread; it also relates to a process for the making of said baker's leaven or sourdough.
DESCRIPTION OF THE RELATED ART
It is well known that, in order to conserve the characteristic features of a natural or traditional leaven, it is absolutely necessary to carry out every day several so-called refreshments which render tedious the work of the bakers. By way of example, it is possible to remember that Parmentier, in 1778 in his book “Le Parfait Boulanger” already underlined “the laborious slavery of the bakers to watch out day and night for what happens in their leavens, and the continuous constraint to refresh them three or four times, which leaves to that class of artists at most three hours to rest.”
A refreshment corresponds to a new addition of flour and of water to the leaven, addition which corresponds on the one hand to a dilution of the fermentation medium and, on the other hand, to an addition of fermentable substances. In order to reduce the number of the necessary refreshments and to achieve the result consisting in the fact that every day the quantities of leaven which must be taken off for breadmaking, are equivalent to the additions of flour and of water which are necessary for the maintenance of the leaven, it has been proposed to use equipments often called “fermentation devices for liquid leaven”. By way of these equipments, it becomes possible to control the temperatures and to use low temperature conservation phases. These systems, which are called “continuous”, are particularly difficult and tricky to run.
The British patent GB 993 751 discloses a process of this kind which consists in providing the leaven, so-called pre-dough, with the necessary additional amounts of its components and in achieving the simultaneous removal or withdrawal of the fermented leaven ready-to-use in bread-making or panification.
A problem not solved to date is how to provide the baker with a ready-to-use leaven, in other words a leaven called “tout point” (“any point”) according to the French traditional terminology, which can be conserved without any intervention at low temperature during several weeks and without loss of its characteristic features.
It is known that bread-making or panification with leaven permits the obtaining of:
an appreciated particular flavor which is especially characterized by a sourish or acetic smell of the crumb;
a bread having a particular texture;
a bread which keeps longer.
These characteristic features of flavor and of texture are the result of the fermentation under the action of the bacteria and of the yeasts of the leaven. Due to these characteristic features, leavened bread or sourdough bread is a bread in great demand with the consumer.
The baking methods which use a leaven prepared by the known techniques present two major drawbacks:
the difficulty to prepare a leaven having identical features at each bread-making, even when using the systems of fermentation which are called “continuous” and which comprise successive or continuous additions and removals or withdrawals,
the short life expectancy of that leaven, even at low temperature; as a matter of fact, in the absence of any refreshment, a too important acidification develops and provokes more or less rapidly in the leaven the disappearance of viable microorganisms, in other words of microorganisms which are capable of multiplication or of fermentation.
In order to remedy the first drawback, the profession has used various techniques among which is the preparation of the leaven in a single step by way of dry concentrates of microorganisms called “starters”, such as the ferments for panification disclosed in the European patent application EP 0 306 692 A1. These microorganism concentrates or starters can equally be presented in a doughy form. The conservation improvement is sought by the increase of dry matters to about 60-80% dry matters of the microorganism culture, without freeze-drying. This doughy form is often obtained by the use of a grain or cereal carrier like in the case of German starter of trademark Bocker Reinzucht-Sauerteig®. These starters are used to seed doughs and permit to obtain a ready-to-use leaven after a fermentation of 15 to 22 hours between 20 to 30° C. These leavens obtained by their seeding with the above defined starters permit to obtain good leaven breads, but these leavens cannot be kept. Either they are used as chief leaven or mother sourdough kept by regular refreshments, or a new leaven must be prepared by seeding a dough with starter for each breadmaking.
Starters can equally be presented in liquid form, i.e. as liquid grain or cereal ferments or suspensions of microorganisms. Such grain ferments are for example disclosed in the French patent FR 82 07047.
These grain ferments which are composed of the association of a Lactobacillus strain and a yeast strain, are cultivated in conjunction in an aqueous medium based on wheat flour; that wheat flour, the starch of which is hydrolyzed, is diluted with about 7 to 10 times its volume of water. These liquid cereal ferments consist of suspensions of microorganisms or microorganism cultures intended to seed the leaven, they conserve their viability at most 3 weeks at 4° C.
An embodiment of that technique is disclosed in patent applications EP 0 684 306 A1, EP 0 684 307 A1, EP 0 684 308 A1, EP 0 806 144 A2; according to that embodiment, the microorganisms are cultivated in a medium obtained by double hydrolysis, within a diluted aqueous mixture, of the starch on the one hand and of a portion of the gluten or more generally of the proteins of the flour(s) used on the other hand.
With respect to the second drawback, it should be remembered that the traditional conservation methods such as freezing and above all drying are not very successful due to the fact that the microorganisms suffer due to the conservation treatment from a more or less important disorganization of their membranes. During the defrosting or the rehydration, the said microorganisms have to reconstitute their membranes and to resume their metabolic activity in the presence of the important quantities of metabolites produced by them, said metabolites being all the more toxic as the cells have been made fragile by the conservation treatment. The dehydrated or dry leavens are in fact dead leavens and their only role is to provide aromatic molecules.
All known preparations of ready-to-use leavens produced in advance, in the absence of refreshments, within a few days and even at 4° C., correspond to preparations which are extremely rich in acids and which practically no longer contain any revivable or revitalizable microorganism, these preparations being unable to ensure the fermentation of the dough of a leavened bread.
Consequently, these solutions proposed to improve the conservation of leaven are not very different as far as their result is concerned from the use of leaven substitutes or dehydrated deactivated prefermented flours, whose unique role is to provide the dough during the kneading with acetic acid and with lactic acid. The breads obtained when using these products which practically do not contain revivable microorganisms,. do not present, of course, in any case, the characteristic texture and the complete flavor of a leavened bread at the moment of their consumption.
It is remarkable that in the documents which deal with the conservation of leavens, no difference is made between, on the one hand, the addition to bread dough of acetic acid, lactic acid and in a general manner of aromatic molecules and, on the other hand, the addition of microorganisms which are capable if fermenting the dough. No control of viable microorganisms present after conservation is made.
That is the case especially of U.S. Pat. No. 4,666,719 which does not contain any indication of prolonged viability of the cultures or of the leavens wh

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