Elsevier

Food Chemistry

Volume 187, 15 November 2015, Pages 525-529
Food Chemistry

Evaluation of canola oil oleogels with candelilla wax as an alternative to shortening in baked goods

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2015.04.110Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Incorporation of candelilla wax to canola oil produced oleogels with solid-like properties.

  • Canola oil oleogels with candelilla wax were tested as an alternative to shortening.

  • Oleogel viscosity was more sensitive to temperature change, compared to shortening.

  • Use of oleogels for shortening produced cookies rich in unsaturated fatty acid (≈92%).

  • Oleogel cookies showed desirable spreadability and soft eating characteristics.

Abstract

The oleogels of canola oil with candelilla wax were prepared and utilized as a shortening replacer to produce cookies with a high level of unsaturated fatty acids. The incorporation of candelilla wax (3% and 6% by weight) to canola oil produced the oleogels with solid-like properties. The firmness of the oleogels was lower than that of the shortening at room temperature. A more rapid change in the viscosity with temperature was observed with increasing levels of candelilla wax in the steady shear measurements. The replacement of shortening with oleogels in the cookie formulation reduced both viscoelastic parameters (G′ and G″) of the cookie doughs. The level of unsaturated fatty acids in the oleogel cookies was distinctly increased up to around 92%, compared to the shortening cookies (47.2%). The cookies with the oleogels showed desirable spreadable property and the replacement of shortening with the oleogels produced cookies with soft eating characteristics.

Introduction

Shortening is an edible fat that has been traditionally used to make baked products such as pastries, cakes, and cookies. Since shortening prevents the cohesion of gluten strands during mixing (Gervajio & Shahidi, 2005), it plays a critical role in the tender texture and mouthfeel of the final products. In addition, shortening imparts other functional characteristics such as aeration and stability, positively contributing to the structure and geometry of the products. However, with the recent well-being trend, a great deal of effort has been made to reduce the use of shortening due to a high level of saturated fatty acids as well as the possible presence of trans fatty acids. In practice, it may be possible to apply vegetable oil to baked goods instead of shortening. However, the use of vegetable oil produces baked goods with more greasy and less crispy characteristics, and also decreases the storage stability of the products mainly due to oil oxidation. In addition, the low viscosity of the oil causes a difficulty in handling and shaping dough. There are a number of preceding studies where shortening was replaced with a variety of carbohydrate-, protein-, and lipid-based ingredients (Lim, Inglett, & Lee, 2010). However, carbohydrate- and protein-based fat replacers could be applied only for the partial replacement of shortening. Although lipid-based fat replacers could be used by replacing fat on an equal weight basis, additional chemical or enzymatic operations for the structural modification may be necessary to produce the lipid-based fat replacers (Akoh, 1998). Thus, as there have been no ideal ingredients for shortening replacement, shortening replacers are more likely to be customized to meet a specific application.

Recently, a new technique called organogelation has been receiving great attention in order to structure edible oils by the use of gelling agents. Through this organogelation, organic liquid can be entrapped in a thermo-reversible gel network, producing oleogels with solid-like properties. Since these oleogels have specific consistency and firmness without changing their chemical compositions, they are shown to have great potential applications in the food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical industry (Marangoni, 2012). Specifically, the use of the oleogels imparts such various functionalities to foods as the restricted oil migration, saturated and trans fat replacement, and emulsion stability (Hughes, Marangoni, Wright, Rogers, & Rush, 2009). Nonetheless, the oleogels are still under-utilized in terms of food-related applications. There are only a few preceding studies where the ethylcellulose and rice bran wax oleogels were applied to meat products (Zetzl, 2013, Zetzl et al., 2012) and ice cream (Zulim Botega, Marangoni, Smith, & Goff, 2013), respectively. Hence, there is a need to extend the use of oleogels to a wider variety of food products.

Candelilla wax used in this study is regarded as a food additive approved by the US FDA and has been often used as a glazing agent in the food industry (Marangoni & Garti, 2011). Oleogels were previously prepared by using candelilla wax with safflower (0.5–6%, w/v) (Toro-Vazquez et al., 2007) and soybean oil (0.5–4%, w/w) (Rocha et al., 2013). In these studies, main research focus was placed on the rheological and thermal properties of the oleogels rather than their processing performance in a food system. Furthermore, canola oil oleogels with candelilla wax have not been prepared to our best knowledge.

In this study, the oleogels of canola oil with candelilla wax were prepared and their rheological properties were characterized. They were then incorporated into the formulation of cookies as a shortening replacer and their effects on the physicochemical properties of the cookies were investigated.

Section snippets

Preparation of oleogels

Candelilla wax (Kahl GmbH & Co. KG, Trittau, Germany) was added to canola oil (CJ Co., Seoul, Korea) at two levels (3% and 6% w/w) and the mixtures were heated at 160 °C, followed by continuous agitation using an overhead mechanical stirrer for 10 min. They were then placed at room temperature overnight, producing the oleogel samples.

Firmness measurement of oleogels

A puncture test was applied to investigate the firmness of oleogels which was compared with that of shortening. Based on the method of Hwang, Singh, Winkler-Moser,

Results and discussion

Fig. 1(a) exhibits the visual appearance of the oleogels prepared from canola oil with candelilla wax. As clearly illustrated in Fig. 1(a), the canola oil in a liquid form was transformed into the translucent and firm oleogels at the two levels (3% and 6%) of candelilla wax. Thus, the physical properties of the liquid oil were readily modified by the addition of candelilla wax without chemical modifications. The mechanical properties of the canola oil oleogels were then investigated by measuring

Conclusions

Canola oil was structured with candelilla wax to produce oleogels with solid-like properties and the oleogels were utilized as an alternative to shortening in cookies. The use of the oleogels for shortening produced cookie samples rich in unsaturated fatty acids and low in saturated fatty acids. In addition, the low viscosity of the oleogels at the baking temperature imparted desirable spreadable characteristics to the cookies. Thereby, the extensive use of oleogels will contribute to the

Acknowledgement

This research was supported by Basic Science Research Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (2013R1A1A2A10004640).

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