The Influence of Water Activity (aw) in Bakery Products

Water activity - a widely unknown or underestimated quality parameter offers many more benefits than just normal moisture content determination. It is the key parameter of gathering information about product shelf life, texture and taste or microbiological and chemical stability. Nowadays, where foodstuffs are shipped around the globe, a tough control of a product’s water activity helps to reach the shelf-life goals and provides support for safe and uncontaminated foods to the consumer.
Especially bakery products are very difficult to handle because in most of the cases, they contain different types of ingredients such as sugar, fats/oils, milk proteins etc. This paper sets out to discuss the influence of those kind of ingredients on water activity measurement and how the determination of aw helps to reach the required quality goals for bakery products.