ALPHAZYMES

Enzyme supplements have been largely used in baking to make consistently high-quality products by enabling better dough handling, providing antistaling properties, and allowing control over crumb texture and color, taste, moisture, and volume. Enzymes with some contribution to bakery products can proceed from enzymes naturally present in flour, those associated with the metabolic activity of the dominant microorganism, or those intentionally added during the mixing step as technological or processing aids. The supplementation of flour and dough with enzyme improvers is a usual practice for flour standardization and also as baking aid. Over the years, enzymes gained importance in the bakery industry for their efficiency to modify dough rheology, gas retention, and crumb softness in bread manufacturing; modifying dough rheology in the manufacture of pastry and biscuits; changing product softness in cake making, and reducing acrylamide formation in bakery products. There are many enzymes used to alter major and minor biomolecule structures and to achieve the desired functionality.

In baking, the most commonly used enzyme classes are hydrolases, such as amylases, proteases, hemicellulases, lipases, and oxidoreductases, which comprise, among others, glucose oxidase and lipoxygenase.