FAT AS AN INGREDIENT

• Oils and fats occur in abundance in nature and have been added to
modify the mouth-feel of baked products since prehistoric times.
• In more recent times, an understanding of the chemistry of fats has
lead to the development of the compound fats that are commonly
used in the manufacture of almost all baked products today.
• Fats are esters of fatty acids and glycerol, which commonly form
triglycerides in which three fatty acids are attached to the glycerol
molecule.
• Fats may be saturated or unsaturated.
• The variation in fat chemistry has a profound effect on its physical
form. The variation in fat chemistry has a profound effect on its
physical form. In particular, the variations account for the difference
in temperature at which a pure oil will make the transition to a solid
• The process by which fats solidify is not simple, because fats can exist
in different polymorphic forms. On cooling, the triglyceride molecules
can pack together into different crystalline arrangements
• In the context of baked products, differences in fat crystalline form
may show themselves as variations in the potential of the fat to
incorporate air in the manufacture of cakes.
• The crystal form and size of the fat also has an impact on the gas
retention properties of the dough, with smaller crystal sizes allowing
more gas retention.
• The role of fat in improving gas retention in modern breadmaking has
been illustrated many times (Williams and Pullen, 1998).
• Although the effect of increasing the level of fat in the recipe is to
increase the gas-retention properties of the dough, a maximum point
is reached eventually, beyond which there appears to be little effect
of increasing the level
• The key role of fats in a number of baking processes requires a more
detailed explanation of the composition of bakery fats. They are in
fact a mixture of solid fat and liquid oil of different types.
• Today vegetable fat sources dominate the blends, whereas in the
past marine and animal sources were commonly used as part of the
composite fat.
• As the temperature of a composite bakery fat is raised, more of the
solid components turn to liquid oil until eventually a temperature is
reached at which all of the material is in the liquid form
Fats, oils and butter
Fats and oils
• The only difference between a fat and an edible oil is that at ambient
temperature a fat is semi-solid, and appears more or less firm to the
touch, and an oil is liquid.
• They are both of similar general chemical composition.
• In addition to butter, which is a well known fat used in baking, there
is a wide range of vegetable, animal and fish fats used in biscuit
manufacturing.
• In all cases the fat will have been refined and deodorised. This
process removes colours, acids and other unpleasant flavours that
occur naturally in fats extracted from various sources and that
develop during storage.
• In many cases the fat refiner can modify the fats by physical and
chemical means so that more or less any physical form of fat is
theoretically possible.
• Since these changes can be expensive, the modified fats that are
commonly encountered by biscuit manufacturers are limited to blends
with particular characters or fats that have been ‘hardened’ to raise
their melting temperatures.
Butter and butter oil
• Butter is used both for its shortening and its flavour effects.
• It is much more expensive than other fats but there is no doubt that
its flavour contribution is substantial and desirable in biscuits. Neither
butter nor butter oil is refined or chemically modified.
• Butter is an emulsified mixture of milk fat, water and a small
amount of protein. The normal maximum permitted water content is
16%.
• Butter varies in quality depending on its origin and the season of the
year and also on whether it contains whey cream where lactic yeast
was used in its manufacture. It may be sold salted or unsalted. If
salted about 1.5% of salt is normally added.
• The flavour of butter is complemented during baking by vanilla and
sugar.
• In the course of biscuit baking the fresh butter flavour changes to a
mild toffee or butterscotch note which has both good flavour and
aroma. A baked butter flavour is enhanced with minimum baking
time at high temperature.
• The handling of butter has become a major obstacle to its large scale
use.
• The optimum temperature for use in biscuit doughs is about 17- 18°C
and it takes many hours for blocks at 4°C to rise to a convenient and
uniform temperature.
• It is not practical to melt the butter and replasticise it in the bakery
and it is also not practical to bulk handle the butter by means of
pumps and pipe lines whilst still maintaining the typical properties.
• Thus, it is necessary to raise the butter temperature either by
conditioning it in temperature controlled rooms for perhaps 48 h or
to increase the temperature more rapidly, for example, with
microwave energy.
• A rapid heating method usually requires that the temperature and
plasticity are equilibrated by working and pressing the butter through
a mincer-type machine with a die plate giving about 4mm diameter
extrusions. Even so, a considerable amount of manual handling is
needed and in a warm bakery it is easy for butter to become too soft
before use. At high ambient temperature butter will become rancid
within a few weeks.
• Butter fat may also be purchased as butter oil without any
appreciable moisture and protein. Blocks of butter oil are not
normally plasticised making them much harder than butter. The
flavour imparted to biscuits made from butter oil instead of butter
is much inferior, so that butter oil is not a popular ingredient for
biscuits.

Butter oil refers to the fat-concentrate obtained mainly from butter or cream by
the removal of practically all the water and nonfat solids
• It may be possible to purchase butter that has been ‘denatured’ with
sugar. If the quantity of sugar added is known this can be a useful
ingredient for biscuits. It is usually cheaper than real butter.
Margarine
• When first invented margarine was a butter substitute made from
oils other than milk fat. There are now many different margarines
developed for special purposes. Normally margarines will have a
content of about 16% water, as does butter, and they are emulsified
and plasticised so that their consistencies resemble butter. The
consistency can be modified by using fats with specific melting
temperatures, a feature that is not possible with butter.
• Because they are emulsified and plasticised, margarines are supplied
and handled like butter. Temperature control of the storage,
especially before use, is of key importance.
Rancidity
• Fats, more than any of the other ingredients used to make biscuits,
can cause quality problems.
• The main problem is rancidity which manifests as unpleasant
flavours. Oxidative rancidity, which is the most common type,
happens when fats are exposed to the air. Certain chemical bonds in
the fats change to produce new substances which even when present
at very low concentrations render the fats unsuitable for use. These
changes are more likely in fats which are liquid at ambient
temperatures.
• There are also some handling conditions that accelerate these
oxidative changes. For example, when handling fats warm and in
bulk, agitation that promotes the inclusion of air (oxygen) should be
avoided.
• All containers, pipework and valves must be free from heavy metals,
particularly copper. Therefore no brass fittings should ever come
into contact with fats. This is because these metals act as catalysts for
the oxidation process.
• The products of fat oxidation also catalyse the oxidation so that fats
should be stored in clean containers or tanks. The use of clean very
hot water is recommended to clean the containers since detergents
are difficult to remove completely and traces may give off-flavours to
fats subsequently filled into the tank.
• There is another type of rancidity known as hydrolytic rancidity
which involves the formation of soaps (saponification) from the fat.
Damp alkaline conditions are required for this chemical change to
occur but this happens rarely in biscuit fat handling.
Bulk handling of fats
• It is common to handle fats in bulk as warm liquids, ie. oils. The
freshly refined oil is delivered by road tankers and will be at around
50°C. This is pumped into tanks at the factory and must be held at
about -5°C to ensure that there is no crystallization during storage.
The tank is kept warm usually by a water jacket since electric heaters
can produce very hot areas that may cause unwanted chemical
changes in the fat.
• The oil is pumped from the tank as required and is usually cooled
before use in a dough.
There are certain precautions that should be taken in bulk handling
oils.
• Before accepting a delivery of oil, sampling should ascertain that
the material is both of the type expected and that its quality is
satisfactory in terms of taste and certain other chemical
characteristics
• Ideally the delivery should be filled into an empty and clean tank. In
this way contamination with old oil is avoided.
• There must be a filter in the pipeline between the tanker and the
tank and this filter must be cleaned before use and examined after
the delivery is complete. It is not unknown for some very
unpleasant matter to have become included with the fat and it is
important to know about this before the oil is used for making
food.
• The process of oil refining involves the use of fine materials which may not
have been completely removed. These materials are harmless but as oil is
held in the tank there will be sedimentation. It is therefore necessary to
design the tank with a sloping floor and to draw off the oil from the high
end of the floor. In this way sedimented matter does not pass out of the
tank.
• In the course of tank cleaning with hot water as described above, the
washings must be drained off from a valve at the lowest point of the tank
floor and any sedimented material will be taken away with the cleaning
water. The sloping floor will also ensure that any water left after washing
collects in a place where it will not be drawn off with oil. Since water is
heavier than oil it will remain at the bottom of the tank.
• As the tank of oil is emptied a film of oil is left on the tank walls. Because
this is warm and exposed it is particularly prone to oxidation. Cleaning will
remove this film and avoid contamination of a subsequent filling of oil.
Ideally the headspace of the tank of oil should be filled with an inert gas
like nitrogen.
• Even by observing all these precautions, rancidity cannot be avoided.
It is therefore important to use bulk oil as fresh as possible and in'no
case to hold it for more than two or three weeks.
Plasticised and Boxed Fat
• It is not normally possible to use liquid oil, either warm or cold, in a biscuit dough mix
because the structure of the dough is affected by the rapid coating of the flour by liquid
oil. Therefore bulk-handled oil must be cooled before use.
• Oil is a mixture of chemical compounds known as glycerides. Each different glyceride
melts at a different temperature giving the fat a wide temperature range between the point
at which crystallisation starts and the point at which all the fat is solid. This makes it
difficult to cool an oil because the solid fractions will collect on any cold surface and
affect the cooling process.
• Oils, therefore, have to be cooled in a machine which continuously scrapes the cooled
surface. The machine is known as a scraped surface heat exchanger. The process is
further complicated because if a very cold surface is used to speed the throughput of the
oil, there is a tendency for the oil to become supercooled. This means that the oil is still
liquid because crystals are slow to form.
• Within a few minutes of leaving the cooler most of the crystals will
have formed and if the liquid is not kept agitated the whole will set
into a hard solid or semi-solid mass because the crystals form an
interlocking matrix. Therefore, as part of the cooling process agitation
must be introduced to ensure that the crystals are broken up as they
form and the fat, which is a mixture of solid and liquid fractions,
remains plastic and pumpable.
• This process, where the crystals are broken as they form, is known as
plasticising. Thus, a plasticised fat is one which has been cooled to
the desired temperature (about 26°C) and the crystals have been
broken so that they are all small within the semi-solid mass.
Crystallisation of a cooled fat is not complete for some time and it is
normal to store plasticised fat for about 24 h before use.
• Boxed fats normally appear very white. In the process of chilling and
plasticising small quantities of nitrogen may be introduced to
enhance this white appearance. Inclusion of a gas may help the
plasticity slightly but has no known advantage in the biscuit dough.
• Most dough fats are chosen to have physical characteristics similar to
butter. This means that they have a relatively wide melting range, are
semi-solid at ambient temperature and are almost completely melted
at blood heat.
• Fats such as palm oil and beef fat can be used as straight fats for
biscuit doughs but it is normal to use blends which can involve many
different fats of both animal, fish and vegetable origin. Selective
hardening and other technical procedures can give blends with the
desired physical characteristics.
• Margarines are made by a similar chilling and plasticising method
but they start with a blend of oils, emulsifiers and a water phase
which often contains milk solids. It is very unusual for biscuit
manufacturers to include water with their fats during chilling and
plasticising and boxed fat is normally pure fat without water so that
technically it is not a margarine.
Sandwich cream fats
• Sandwich cream fats are normally selected for their special melting
properties.
• Sandwich creams for biscuits, which are principally mixtures of sugar
and fat, should remain hard at ambient temperature but should melt
rapidly in the mouth to release the flavour of the sugar and other
components.
• Commonly used oils include coconut oil & palm kernel oil.
Spray oil fats
• Many cracker biscuits are sprayed with oil immediately after baking.
This improves the appearance of the biscuits and modifies the eating
quality.
• The fat used for spraying must be selected with care. On the surface
of biscuits the fat is exposed to the air and hence to oxidation. The
technique of spraying also is conducive to oxidation changes as the oil
is hot and the droplets are small and have a great surface area.
• Fats which are resistant to oxidative change should be used. The
cheapest and among the best are the same fats that are used for
sandwich creams, coconut oil and palm kernel oil. The fats are
sprayed warm and the fact that they are solid at ambient
temperature is not important as the film on the biscuit surface does
not set to an obvious crust.
• However, if higher melting types are used there is a tendency for the
fat to set and cause adhesion to touching biscuits when packed in
columns. The adhesion may result in damage to the thin surface of
the biscuits as they are separated before eating.
Use of emulsifiers and antioxidants
• Fats and water are not miscible. Thus when doughs are made it is
necessary for vigorous action to ensure that the fat is present as very small
globules in a flour and sugar system that has an aqueous phase. It is
possible to improve the dispersion of the fat in the aqueous phase by using
a chemical that has both water and oil solubility characters.
• Chemicals with these properties are called surface active agents and range
from those that promote the dissolution of fats in water, known to us as
detergents, and those that promote the dispersion of water in fat,
commonly called emulsifiers.
• Fats in a biscuit recipe contribute to the soft eating nature of the baked
biscuit. They make the dough shorter, less extensible and the biscuit
softer because less water is needed to make the dough. For this reason
dough fats are sometimes referred to as shortenings.
• By using a small quantity of an emulsifier the fat is dispersed in the
dough better and the shortening effect is significantly improved. It is
common to find that using an emulsifier can reduce the quantity of
fat needed by 10% or more to achieve a similar biscuit eating quality
to a dough which contained no emulsifier.
• The most commonly used emulsifier in biscuits is lecithin which is
derived from soya beans. Lecithin used in its plasticised form, which
is a thick syrupy material, is often best added to the dough fat before
it is cooled and plasticised. In this way the dispersion through the fat,
and hence in the dough, is optimised. It is however possible to add
lecithin, or other emulsifiers, directly to the dough in either the fluid
or powder form.
• Margarines which contain water usually have an emulsifier added at
the time of manufacture. It is not necessary to add more emulsifier
when this form of fat is used to make a dough.
• Attention has been drawn above to the potential problems of fat
rancidity on biscuit quality. Precautions have been listed to reduce
the incidence of rancidity.
• Precautions will not prevent rancidity occurring, they will merely
retard the onset. It is also common to use chemicals known as
antioxidants to retard the onset of rancidity. There is a range of
antioxidant materials and all are strictly controlled by food legislation.
• If fats are handled correctly the use of antioxidants offers little
advantage. They may be useful if the fat bulk handling facilities or the
biscuit packaging systems are poor. Prevention of the onset of
rancidity is most important. Therefore it is recommended that if
antioxidants seem to be necessary, they be added by the fat
manufacturer immediately after the fat is refined and not into the
biscuit dough.
• to assess the baking potential of a composite fat effectively it is
necessary to measure the proportion of fat which exists in the solid
form over a range of temperatures
• In addition to potential interactions with oils, liquids and gases,
emulsifiers may play a role in starch-complexing(anti-staling) and
interact with proteins (Kamel and Ponte, 1993). Natural surfactants
(emulsifiers) do occur in nature but many are the result of
manufacturing technologies available today.
• In addition to potential interactions with oils, liq uids and gases,
emulsifiers may play a role in starch-complexing (anti-staling) and
interact with proteins (Kamel and Ponte, 1993).
• Natural surfactants (emulsifiers) do occur in nature but many are the
• result of manufacturing technologies available today.
The main roles of solid fat in bakery products
may be summarized as follows:
Bread and fermented goods
• Stabilization of gas bubbles incorporated into the dough, which leads
to improvement to the gas-retention properties of the dough, which
is usually manifested as improved oven spring (the difference in
height between the dough entering the oven and the baked bread
leaving it)
• Inhibition of gas-bubble coalescence, which leads to finer (smaller cell
size) crumb structure in the baked product
• A contribution to crumb softness at higher levels of addition
Cakes
• Enhancement of air incorporation during batter preparation
• Inhibition of gas-bubble coalescence, which leads to finer (smaller cell
size) crumb structure in the baked product
• A contribution to crumb softness at higher levels of addition
Laminated products
• Improvements to product lift by slowing down the diffusion of steam
between dough layers.
• Laminated pastry lift increases with both the quantity and quality of
the laminated fat. In the latter case, the higher the melting point or
the greater the proportion of solid fat at a given temperature the
greater the pastry lift
• Significant contribution to the sensory properties of the product, with
higher-melting-point fats conferring unacceptable palate-cling and waxy
mouth feel
Biscuits and cookies
• Contribution to biscuit aeration
• Significant contribution to the sensory properties of the product , with
higher-melting-point fats conferring unacceptable palatecling and waxy
mouth feel
• In the application the fat is called shortening. By coating of the gluten of
the flour, the dough will be not so elastic as a bread dough: the dough stays
“short”.

• Large biscuit manufacturers are buying and storing hot (melted) fat in tanks
and apply it as such or first let crystallise in cooling equipment before it is
used.
For the application in biscuits the level and the type of fat is important
for:

• homogeneous distribution in the dough and possibly the aeration of

Dough Spread in the Hardness of

Higher
Harder No influence Harder
N-values
Higher fat
Softer More spread Softer
level
• The two common types of emulsion are oil in water (salad dressings) and water in oil (margarines). Batters
and doughs are complex emulsions and a number of different emulsifiers are used successfully to aid oil and,
more critically, air dispersion and their stability during all stages of baking processes.
Dairy products
• All the ingredients included here are derived from milk or eggs. In
biscuit manufacture their principal value is for flavour although there
are also tenderising properties associated with the fats and
emulsifying compounds which they contain.
• Milk, butter, cheese and eggs have been traditional ingredients for
baking due to their exceptional nutritional values as well as their
flavour. The technology of milk production has now developed to
such an extent that there are a large number of distinct derivatives
each with special value for the food industry. Only a few are
commonly used in biscuit manufacture.