Journal of Food Engineering 55 (2002) 4148

www.elsevier.com/locate/jfoodeng

Optimisation of the temperature prole in bread baking

Nantawan Therdthai a, Weibiao Zhou
a

a,b,*

, Thomas Adamczak

Centre for Advanced Food Research, University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury Campus, Penrith South DC NSW 1797, Australia
b
Department of Chemistry, National University of Singapore, 3 Science Drive 3, 117543 Singapore
c
BRI Australia Limited & Quality Wheat CRC Limited, North Ryde, NSW 2113, Australia
Received 1 September 2001; accepted 26 November 2001

Abstract
The common industrial practice in bread making is to bake bread in an oven that is controlled at a constant temperature. Due to
the oven structure, the bread eectively experiences four major temperature zones. On the other hand, temperature in each zone is
the dominating factor on the baking mechanisms including gelatinisation, enzymatic reaction and browning reaction, therefore the
nal bread quality. This research aims to establish an optimal temperature prole for white-sandwich bread to achieve the best
product quality. Experiments were conducted by a multi-level partial factorial design, where dough was baked in a process with 4
equally divided zones. Mathematical models were established to describe the eects of tin temperature and baking time on bread
quality attributes. Based on the models, by solving a constrained minimisation problem, the optimal tin temperature prole for the
lowest weight loss was determined to be {115 C, 130 C, 156 C, 176 C} in the four zones with a baking time of 27.4 min. The
crumb temperature was predicted to reach 99 C, while the top crust colour, side crust colour and averaged crust colour were all
within an acceptable range.
2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Bread baking; Oven; Modelling; Optimisation; Temperature prole

1. Introduction
In bread making, baking is a key step in which the
raw dough piece is transformed into a light, porous,
readily digestible and avourful product, under the inuence of heat. With the requisite quality attributes, the
bread production presumes a carefully controlled baking process. The vital inuence on nal product quality
includes the rate and amount of heat application, the
humidity level in the baking chamber and baking time.
During baking, the most apparent interactions are volume expansion, crust formation, inactivation of yeast
and enzymatic activities, protein coagulation and partial
gelatinisation of starch in dough (Pyler, 1988).
A typical baking process can be divided into 3 stages.
The rst stage takes one-fourth of a total baking time of
26 min. The temperature of outer crumb increases at an
average rate of 4.7 C per minute to 60 C. An increase
in temperature enhances enzymatic activity and yeast

Corresponding author. Tel.: +65-874-2658; fax: + 65-775-7895.

E-mail address: chmzwb@nus.edu.sg (W. Zhou).

growth resulting in oven rise. The volume increases by

one-third of the original. Furthermore, surface skin
loses elasticity, thickens and begins to appear brown in
colour. In the second stage, crumb temperature increases at a rate of 5.4 C per minute to 98.498.9 C
before remaining constant. At this temperature, all reactions are maximised, including moisture evaporation,
starch gelatinisation, and protein coagulation. Dough
becomes crumb in structure from outer to inner portions
by penetrating heat. A typical browning crust can be
observed when crust temperature reaches 150205 C.
Finally, the volatilisation of organic substances is designated as the bake-out-loss. This period also takes onefourth of the total baking time (Swortguer, 1968).
The common industrial practice is to bake bread in an
oven that is controlled at a constant temperature. Due to
the oven structure, the bread eectively experiences four
major temperature zones. Fig. 1 shows the schematic
diagram of an industrial baking oven. On the other hand,
temperature in each zone is the dominating factor on
the baking mechanisms including gelatinisation, enzymatic reaction and browning reaction, therefore the nal
bread quality. This paper aims to establish mathematical

0260-8774/02/$ - see front matter 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
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N. Therdthai et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 55 (2002) 4148

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of an industrial baking oven.

models to describe the eect of baking temperature and

time on the bread quality attributes including crust colour, crumb temperature and weight loss. These models
are in quadratic form. The temperature prole and
baking time are then optimised to minimise weight loss,
using the models developed.
The rest of this paper is organised as follows. Materials and methods are given in Section 2. Oven conditions
and temperature proles of the experiments are discussed
in Section 3. A preliminary analysis of the eect of tin
temperature on the quality attributes is then described in
Section 4. The development of mathematical models is
given in Section 5, followed by optimisation in Section 6.
Conclusions are provided in Section 7.
2. Materials and methods
The experiment was designed by a 35 partial factorial.
The ve independent variables were temperatures in
zone 1, zone 2, zone 3, and zone 4, and baking time. The
dependent variables included weight loss, top crust
colour, side crust colour, bottom crust colour, average
crust colour, and crumb temperature. The total baking
time was equally distributed to the four zones during
baking.
Bread: Dough was prepared in batches. Six pieces of
dough were made in each batch, composing of 59.5%
our, 1.8% yeast, 1.2% salt, 1.2% fat, 0.6% improver and
35.7% water. They were placed in an array of moulds
and baked in an oven under one set of designated conditions.
Ovens: A BRI oven simulator (APV Baker Pty) was
set up at dierent conditions covering tin temperature
from 180 to 210 C, airow velocity from 0 to 1.8 m/s,
and baking time from 22 to 30 min. To simulate the four
spatial zones in an industrial oven, during each experiment, four stages of the oven conditions were set up

sequentially and the baking time for each stage was the
same.
2.1. Measurements
Temperature: Temperature was monitored during
baking by a BRI-HPR7 Bakelog (Type K thermocouple). As shown in Fig. 2, tin temperature was measured
on the lid, side and bottom of the mould, and crumb
temperature was measured at 53 mm from the lid.
Moisture loss: Moisture loss was calculated by the
weight dierence between dough and bread.
Crust colour: Crust colour is an important attribute
of bread, contributing to consumer preference. It is
produced by chemical reactions including Maillard reaction and caramelisation. Bread crust is measured by a
Minolta CR-310 colorimeter with Lab system as
shown in Fig. 3. The response was expressed as the
lightness (L) of crust colour. The acceptable top and side

Fig. 2. Measuring positions for top (1), side (2), bottom (3) and internal (4) temperatures during baking.

Fig. 3. Measuring positions for crust colour. A: top, B: side, C: bottom.

Average crust colour A B C=3.

N. Therdthai et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 55 (2002) 4148

crust colours of white-sandwich bread range from 50 to

60 and 60 to 72, respectively. In addition, the average
crust colour should be between 54 and 62 of L-value. It
is worth to note that the darker the colour, the lower the
corresponding L-value.

3. Oven conditions and temperature proles

During each experiment, oven conditions were set up
to generate dierent tin temperature proles including
top (lid), side and bottom temperatures. Typical temperature proles are shown in Fig. 4. The proles were
generated by adjusting the oven temperature setting. In
addition, with the same adjustment of the oven setting
temperature, dierent airow velocity would produce
dierent tin temperature proles because of its eect on
heat transfer. A total of 125 sets of tin temperature proles were produced by adjusting the oven setting temperature, airow velocity and baking time. The average
value of the measured temperatures in each zone was
then calculated, which was used as a modelling parameter later. Table 1 shows several temperature proles
with the corresponding oven conditions.
It was observed that the side tin temperature was
always lower than the top and bottom tin temperatures.
This is because of the physical shape of the moulds. There
was a small gap between any two neighbouring moulds,
which aected the circulation of hot air and therefore
created a relatively cold spot. The bottom tin temperature
was generally the highest because the distance between
the moulds and the bottom heating element/convective
fan was shorter than the distance between the moulds and
the top heating element/convective fan. However, in zone

Fig. 4. Typical temperature proles. (1) bottom temperature, (2) top

temperature, (3) side temperature, (4) averaged bottom temperature,
(5) averaged top temperature, (6) averaged side temperature.

43

1, normally the top and bottom temperatures were not

signicantly dierent. This is because that the lid was preheated before being placed on the moulds, as a result, the
initial top tin temperature was high.
Dierent tin temperature proles produced various
crumb temperature proles, which resulted in dierent
rates of mass transfer and thermal reactions including
browning reaction, gelatinisation and enzymatic reaction, therefore the variations in bread quality.

4. Preliminary analysis of the experimental data

Tin temperatures including top temperature, side
temperature and bottom temperature were measured to
determine the inuence of each baking zone. By a statistical analysis, it was found that each zone temperature
aected dierently the quality attributes, which included
weight loss, internal temperature (crumb temperature)
and crust colour as shown in Tables 24.
For the weight loss, the temperatures in zone 3 have
shown the highest correlation coecients. Physically,
weight loss during baking is mainly from water evaporation at the outermost layer. In the rst baking zone,
the tin temperature has been increased just from proving
temperature (around 40 C). Thus, the dough temperature at the outmost layer was still low, resulting in low
vapour pressure. When the temperature increased in
zones 2 and 3, vapour pressure also increased; as a result, weight loss was higher. However increasing temperature in zone 4 did not increase the weight loss as
signicantly as that in zone 3. This is because most of
the crust moisture was lost during baking in zone 3 resulting in lower vapour pressure in zone 4, even though
the temperature kept increasing.
Regarding the crust colour, the tin temperatures in
zones 3 and 4 produced signicant eect, compared to
those in zones 1 and 2. This is because crust colour is
actually developed by Maillard reaction at around 150
205 C (Pyler, 1988). Generally, the temperatures in
zones 1 and 2 are less than 150 C. Therefore increasing
a temperature to not more than 150 C cannot contribute much to colour development. In contrast, increasing the temperatures in zones 3 and 4 (normally
higher than 150 C) enhances the Maillard reaction,
resulting in darker crust (lower L-value). However, the
relationship between temperature, time and crust colour
is not linear. Zanoni, Peri, and Bruno (1995b) described
this relationship by a rst-order equation. Baking time
showed more inuence on the side colour than the top
colour and bottom colour. In our case, the side temperature was always lower than the top temperature and
bottom temperature. Therefore, longer baking time can
make side colour signicantly darker.
Compared to the temperature in zone 4, the temperatures in the rst three zones signicantly correlated

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N. Therdthai et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 55 (2002) 4148

Table 1
Examples of oven conditions and temperature proles
Example

Zone

Baking time
(min)

Setting
temperature (C)

Top convective
fan speed (m/s)

Bottom convective
fan speed (m/s)

Average tin temperature

(C) top/side/bottom

1
2
3
4

6.0
6.0
6.0
6.0

180
180
180
180

0
0
0
0

0
0
0
0

104/81/101
124/112/138
151/141/164
164/155/174

1
2
3
4

6.5
6.5
6.5
6.5

195
195
195
195

0.8
0.8
0.8
0.8

0.4
0.4
0.4
0.4

143/115/142
160/149/172
170/158/179
175/163/182

1
2
3
4

7.0
7.0
7.0
7.0

210
210
210
210

1.8
1.8
1.8
1.8

1.6
1.6
1.6
1.6

168/137/165
187/170/189
194/177/192
199/183/196

1
2
3
4

6.0
6.0
6.0
6.0

210
180
210
180

1.8
0
1.8
0

1.6
0
1.6
0

147/130/154
156/143/168
162/154/172
176/168/187

1
2
3
4

7.0
7.0
7.0
7.0

180
210
210
180

0
1.8
1.8
0

0
1.6
1.6
0

125/96/109
152/148/158
162/155/163
170/161/168

Table 2
Correlation between the weight loss and the baking temperatures and time
Correlation coecient (R)

Zone 1

Zone 2

Zone 3

Zone 4

Top temperature
Side temperature
Bottom temperature

0.6475
0.5967
0.5779

0.7408
0.6736
0.5901

0.8449
0.7877
0.7064

0.7364
0.6048
0.5041

Time

0.6398

0.6398

0.6398

0.6398

Table 3
Correlation between the crust colour and the baking temperatures and time
Correlation coecient (R)
Top crust colour

Side crust colour

Bottom crust colour

Zone 1

Zone 2

Zone 3

Zone 4

Top temperature
Side temperature
Bottom temperature

)0.5596
)0.5501
)0.5405

)0.7024
)0.6440
)0.5989

)0.9129
)0.8734
)0.8291

)0.8586
)0.6956
)0.6353

Time

)0.4132

)0.4132

)0.4132

)0.4132

Top temperature
Side temperature
Bottom temperature

)0.5379
)0.5140
)0.4573

)0.6261
)0.5985
)0.4725

)0.7753
)0.7837
)0.6587

)0.7870
)0.7089
)0.5759

Time

)0.6198

)0.6198

)0.6198

)0.6198

Top temperature
Side temperature
Bottom temperature

)0.3952
)0.3893
)0.4573

)0.4677
)0.4521
)0.5111

)0.7149
)0.7641
)0.8138

)0.8327
)0.7650
)0.8002

Time

)0.2281

)0.2281

)0.2281

)0.2281

Note: The darker the colour, the lower the corresponding L-value. Therefore the correlation coecients in this table are negative.

to the nal internal temperature. During baking in zone

1 to zone 3, heat is transferred from the outer layer to

the centre. The surface temperature increases quickly

whereas the central temperature increases much slowly.

N. Therdthai et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 55 (2002) 4148

45

Table 4
Correlation between the nal internal temperature and the baking temperatures and time
Correlation coecient (R)

Zone 1

Zone 2

Zone 3

Zone 4

Top temperature
Side temperature
Bottom temperature

0.5737
0.5307
0.4986

0.6701
0.6390
0.5591

0.5867
0.5014
0.4111

0.3763
0.2588
0.1565

Time

0.4408

0.4408

0.4408

0.4408

As a result, the partial water vapour pressure at the

surface is higher than that at the centre. To reduce
the pressure dierence, water vapour moves towards the
centre. Due to the low temperature at the centre, water
vapour is condensed (Thorvaldsson & Janestad, 1999).
Consequently, the internal temperature at the centre will
increase, and then keep constant at not over 100 C
(Auerman, 1977). The stable stage is normally in the last
baking stage. Therefore, increasing the temperature in
zone 4 does very little to enhance the nal internal
temperature at the centre.
Fig. 5. Correlation between experimental value and model output for
weight loss. MSE 0.1734, R 0:9747.

5. Mathematical models
Considering the top, side and bottom tin temperatures, their impacts on the quality attributes were different. The top temperature generally showed higher
correlations to the quality attributes. However, these tin
temperatures cannot be simply averaged. In this study,
linear regression has been carried out to estimate the
weighting factors for top, side and bottom temperatures
in each zone as shown in Eq. (1).
xi WTi  Ti WSi  Si WBi  Bi ;

where xi i 1; . . . ; 4 are the weighted temperatures

in the four zones. WTi are the weighting factors for
top temperature. WSi are the weighting factors for side
temperature. WBi are the weighting factors for bottom temperature. Ti , Si and Bi are the top, side and
bottom temperatures.
Modelling: After screening, 96 experimental data with
varied tin temperature in each zone and baking time
were used for modelling. The second-order equations
describing the relationship between baking temperature
and time, weight loss, crust colour and internal temperature are as follows:
yi fi x1 ; x2 ; x3 ; x4 ; x5

Fig. 6. Correlation between experimental value and model output for

internal temperature. MSE 1.9827, R 0:9212.

and
fi bi0

5
X
j1

bij xj

5
X
j;k1;j6k

bijk xj xk

5
X

bijj x2j ;

j1

where yi i 1; . . . ; 6 are the quality attributes: %

weight loss y1 , internal temperature y2 , side crust

Fig. 7. Correlation between experimental value and model output for

top crust colour. MSE 3.6040, R 0:9591.

46

N. Therdthai et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 55 (2002) 4148

Table 5
Model performance for verication
Model performance

% weight loss

Internal temperature

Top colour

Side colour

Bottom colour

Average colour

MSE
R

0.3251
0.9452

3.1136
0.9150

5.7298
0.9329

6.5410
0.9166

5.8936
0.8363

3.4360
0.9437

Fig. 8. Correlation between experimental value and model output for

side crust colour. MSE 3.0272, R 0:9483.

Fig. 9. Correlation between experimental value and model output for

bottom crust colour. MSE 7.4365, R 0:8585.

Fig. 10. Correlation between experimental value and model output for
average crust colour. MSE 2.7936, R 0:9527.

colour y3 , top crust colour y4 , bottom crust colour

y5 , and average crust colour y6 . xi i 1; . . . ; 4 are
again the weighted temperatures in the four zones, respectively. x5 is the baking time. bi0 , bij , bijk and
bijj i 0; 1; . . . ; 5; j 1; . . . ; 5; k 1; . . . ; 5; j 6 k
are model parameters.
Model performance was evaluated by calculating the
mean square error (MSE) and the correlation coecient
(R) between the actual experimental value and the model
output for each of the quality attributes, as shown in
Figs. 510.
Verication: 23% of the overall experimental data
were used for verifying the models. As shown in Table 5,
the model performance for verication was similar to
that for modelling.
Overall, the accuracy of the models was reasonable,
except the one for the bottom colour. According to the
correlation coecients in Tables 24, the bottom temperature provided the least signicant correlation to
almost all the quality attributes, except the bottom
colour. Consequently, the weighting factor for the bottom temperature from the regression calculation was
a low value. So the bottom temperature was much
less weighted than the top and side temperatures in
calculating the weighted temperature. This resulted in a
low quality model for the bottom colour, as the model
used the weighted temperatures as its independent
variables.

6. Optimisation
Based on the models developed in the previous section, the weight loss during baking can be minimised.
Intuitively, to reduce the weight loss, either the baking
time and/or the baking temperature has to be reduced.
However, bread has to be properly baked. Indicators for
properly baked bread include internal temperature and
crust colour.
During baking, the internal temperature aects starch
gelatinisation. Zanoni, Peri, and Bruno (1995a) stated
that the rst quality index of soft baked products such
as bread should be a complete starch gelatinisation.
Sensory acceptability in terms of appearance and texture
will not be ensured without a complete starch gelatinisation. Therefore the extent of starch gelatinisation
was recommended to be taken as an essential baking

N. Therdthai et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 55 (2002) 4148

47

Table 6
Optimum temperature prole at dierent baking time
Prole

Zone 1

Zone 2

Zone 3

Zone 4

Time

% loss

Internal
temperature

Top
colour

Side
colour

Bottom
colour

Average
colour

Opt.
1
2
3
4

115.2
117.3
112.9
109.9
106.0

130.0
130.0
130.0
130.0
130.0

156.4
154.4
160.1
163.3
166.0

175.7
174.4
173.9
176.3
178.7

27.4
28
27
26
25

7.88
8.03
8.03
7.99
7.93

99
99
99
99
99

54
54
53
52
51

72
72
72
72
72

60
60
58
56
57

62
62
61
60
60

index. The extent of gelatinisation increases to 0.980.99

at 9598 C. Therefore, the internal temperature in our
optimisation was constrained to the range 9799 C.
Narrowing the range was to reduce the impact of
modelling error.
Besides the internal temperature, the crust colour has
to be developed into an acceptable range. Because the
model quality for the bottom crust colour was low, the
average crust colour instead of the bottom crust colour
was used for optimisation. The top, side and average
crust colours were constrained to the range 5060, 60
72, and 5462 (L-value), respectively. These ranges were
determined from the white-sandwich bread prepared
with the same recipe and baked in a commercial condition. This will prevent the bread from being too pale
or too dark when the baking temperature and time are
minimised.
The optimisation problem was formulated as follows:
y1 f1 x1 ; x2 ; x3 ; x4 ; x5

Subject to 97 < y2 f2 x1 ; x2 ; x3 ; x4 ; x5 < 99;

60 < y3 f3 x1 ; x2 ; x3 ; x4 ; x5 < 72;

50 < y4 f4 x1 ; x2 ; x3 ; x4 ; x5 < 60;

54 < y6 f6 x1 ; x2 ; x3 ; x4 ; x5 < 62;

100 < x1 < 155;

130 < x2 < 180;

10

140 < x3 < 190;

11

150 < x4 < 200;

12

24 < x5 < 28:

13

Minimise

Solving the above problem, the optimum temperature

prole was found to be 115, 130, 156 and 176 C for
zones 1, 2, 3 and 4, respectively, as shown in Table 5.
The optimum baking time was found to be 27.4 min.
The corresponding top, side and average crust colours
fell into the acceptable range. The internal temperature
reached 99 C.
Considering the optimum tin temperature prole,
dough was baked gradually from the beginning until
zone 3. During this period, enzymatic reaction was activated. Starch was hydrolysed by amylase resulting in
sucrose, glucose and maltose. Yeast used these sugars

for fermentation and produced carbon dioxide gas. The

carbon dioxide gas was dissolved into aqueous part.
When yeast was killed, the carbon dioxide gas was
released resulting in volume expansion. Then high
temperature was used in the last zone for enhancing
browning reaction and gelatinisation. Crust colour
was completely developed when the crust temperature
reaches the range 150205 C (Pyler, 1988). Also the
extent of starch gelatinisation was 0.98 as the internal
temperature reaches 95 C (Zanoni et al., 1995a).
To investigate how the optimum tin temperature
prole changes with the baking time, the above optimisation problem was reformulated and solved at various xed baking time (i.e. the inequality constraint
on x5 , Eq. (13) was replaced by an equality constraint).
The results are presented in Table 6. It can be seen
that reducing the baking time caused an increase in
the weighted tin temperature in zone 3 and zone 4.
According to Table 3, the baking time markedly aected
the side crust colour. A shorter baking time increased
the L-values; as a result, the side crust colour and the
average crust colour were too pale. To make the crust
colour darker, the temperatures in zones 3 and 4 had to
be increased. However, increasing the temperatures in
these two zones caused more weight loss. To minimise
the weight loss, the temperatures in zone 1 and zone 2
should be decreased because the temperatures in these
two zones did not signicantly increase the darkness of
the crust colour. Moreover, the internal temperature
already reached the minimum requirement. Because the
temperature in zone 2 in the optimum temperature
prole was already at the lower constraint bound, only
the temperature in zone 1 was actually reduced.

7. Conclusion
Mathematical models have been developed to describe the eect of the baking temperature prole and
baking time on the weight loss, crust colour and internal
temperature for white-sandwich bread. Based on these
models, by formulating and solving an optimisation
problem, it has been determined that dough should
be baked for 27.4 min with the weighted tin temperatures at 115, 130, 156 and 176 C for zones 1, 2, 3, 4,

48

N. Therdthai et al. / Journal of Food Engineering 55 (2002) 4148

respectively. This optimum temperature prole will

produce the lowest weight loss during baking while the
crust colour and internal temperature are maintained
within an acceptable range. Optimum temperature
proles at other baking times have also been investigated. The results presented in this paper should provide
some guidance to designing a variant setpoint for the
controllers in a commercial baking oven.

Acknowledgements
Financial support to N. Therdthai from the Thai
government is gratefully acknowledged.

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Zanoni, B., Peri, C., & Bruno, D. (1995a). Modelling of starch
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