Northern Irish company, Carritech Research, plans to bring ColdBake to the bakery industry – products are cooked at 47 degrees or under, so no nutritional value is lost.

 

The Nutrition and preventative healthcare company, Carritech Research, is in discussions with bakery, snacks and breakfast cereal companies about bringing its ColdBake technology to market.

The concept is that because the product is baked at less than 47 degrees, (in some cases as low as 40 degrees), you get a light, aerated, crispy product, but it retains all the nutrients that otherwise would have been destroyed in the baking process.

ColdBake is based on vacuum oven technology. It weighs and blends powdered ingredients, adds and mixes liquid ingredients and water, shapes the resulting moist powders or dough into granules or larger pieces, allows those pieces to ‘condition’, and expands and dries the pieces in a vacuum oven.

Richard Horton, managing director of Carritech, told British Baker: “ColdBake is a lower-temperature process based on vacuum expansion and drying that can produce foods able to carry heat-sensitive ingredients such as vitamins and probiotics.”

The patented ColdBake process has been in development for more than five years, and the Belfast business said it had now reached a critical point in its commercialisation.

Horton said: “We are currently involved in confidential dialogue with a number of companies regarding product applications, including baked goods and pharmaceuticals.”

Vacuum oven technology

ColdBake would require a manufacturer to make an investment in vacuum oven kit, although Carritech said: “This would be no greater than an alternative expansion or dehydration process such as extrusion cooking.”

As to the product’s potential impact, Horton said: “This could be potentially groundbreaking for the bakery industry and could be a real way forward, as there is no need for fortifying afterwards, and the texture and flavour remains as good as it can be.

“There are fantastic opportunities across the bakery sector, and we’re really excited about it.”