Bringing food chemistry to life

More from ACS, and appropriate to the New Year.

A video on the chemistry of champagne.

http://www.bytesizescience.com/index.cfm/2011/12/27/A-toast-to-the-chemistry-of-Champagne

Here is a still of the figure from the JAFC paper

http://blogs.oregonstate.edu/deliciousnessw09/2010/08/26/now-the-proof-is-in/

More fun about flavor chemistry here.

http://www.bytesizescience.com/index.cfm/2011/12/8/ChemMatters-Flavor-chemistry–The-science-behind-the-taste-and-smell-of-food

Ever wondered about the chemistry behind a great Thanksgiving dinner? Here’s your chance to dazzle your friends with your knowledge of the esoteric and the practical chemistry of this national favorite.

The webinar is presented by Harold McGee and is part of the American Chemical Society’s “Joy of Science” Food Chemistry Series [link].

The series has included these topics

• Advanced Beer Chemistry and Brewing
  
• Cheers! The Chemistry of Wine
  
• The Chemistry of Cheese and Why We Love It
  
• Advanced Culinary Chemistry – Sizzles for the Summer
  
• Advances and Innovations in Wine Chemistry
• The Chemical Keys to Thanksgiving Dinner [you can register here]

with - Top Five Chemistry Tips for the Kitchen to come Feb 16 2012.

The older webinars in the series are available for viewing on the Food Chemistry Series web page

The Thanksgiving presentation will cover…

• The pros and cons of brining your turkey
• The two kinds of turkey muscle and how they’re best cooked
• How heating rates affect the flavor of sweet potatoes
• Why traditional persimmon pudding is almost black, and how to make it persimmon-colored
• And much more…

50% barley flour pita: with help from Leslie Mackie of Macrina in Seattle. Leslie showcased some of her breads made with barley and gave her own workshop on her breads. Leslie’s bakery is extremely well regarded – Macrina was named one of the USA’s top 10 bakeries in 2011 by  BON APPÉTIT

Fairhaven mill whole barley flour, pita, & barley  bread in the style of a baguette,.

Barley pretzels, getting ready for the lye [NaOH] dip.

The evening before: getting pain au levain with 10% barley ready for the next mornings workshop

Eat your wholegrains: barley that is!

Photos courtesy of Patrick Hayes, the leader of BARLEYWORLD

Read more: http://wholegrainsurf.blogspot.com/#ixzz1ZM44wI27

After a long hiatus the blog is being revitalized.

More molecules of the moment to come.

This is wheat I did with my weekend.

http://kneadingconferencewest.com/

reported here

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/25147/kneading-conference-west-2011

and here

http://www.farine-mc.com/2011/09/back-from-kneading-conference-west-2011.html

and here

http://reallygoodwriter.com

Pictures are courtesy of Meeghen at Breadsong who also makes a killer 80% rye bread that uses the a “scald” or porridge of pre-gelatinized rye flour as part of the process.

The breads come from the session I shared with Leslie Mackie of Macrina Bakeries Seattle on barley in breads.

Other than that I shared a long session on the science of breadmaking and grain and flour testing methods with Lee Glass MD, and Bread Baker’s Guild member.

My job as a cereal scientist sometimes affords me the joy of a full day of baking, product development, and promotion of our work and the farmers who are putting their money where their mouth is and growing food barley.

In all the products shown below, the flour has a minimum of 10% stone-ground whole barley. The long loaves and the pretzels have 50% wholegrain barley flour and the big sandwich loaves have 50% barley with 35% stone-ground whole-wheat. The remainder is plain baker’s flour.

This was for our successful  “Barley and Friends” field day. {link} held this May 9th.

And good practice for our event at the “Kneading Conference West” in September {link}.

The barley pretzels are, of course, the natural accompaniment to that other barley product, good beer!

Thanks to Jake Mattson of the Oregon State Food Science department for helping to divide, shape, and dip [in 1M NaOH] the 100 pretzels we made!

More good news about coffee

American Chemical Society Press release 4th May 2011

“New evidence that caffeine is a healthful antioxidant in coffee”.

Is Caffeine a Good Scavenger of Oxygenated Free Radicals? Jorge Rafael Len-Carmona, & Annia Galano. The Journal of Physical Chemistry B, 2011, 115 (15), 4538-4546.  [link]

Len-Carmona, & Galano note that caffeine [1,3,7-trimethylxanthine] is found also in “seeds, citrus fruits, olive oil, tea, and cocoa beverages“.

Their work suggested that caffeine is a good scavenger of some reactive oxygen species, but not all. Excellent ^•OH scavenging activity was reported, only “modest” scavenging of ^•OCH₃ and no scavenging of HOO^•

They cite work of others that suggest caffeine is effective against conditions related to oxidative stress in the body including Alzheimer’s disease, eye lens damage from photochemically induced reactive oxygen species, and that caffeine [actually its metabolites in humans]  may have antioxidant potential at least that of ascorbic acid .

Typically the press release was a little less guarded than the paper:  “Scientists are reporting an in-depth analysis of how the caffeine in coffee, tea, and other foods seems to protect against conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease on the most fundamental levels.” “Annia Galano and Jorge Rafael León-Carmona describe evidence suggesting that coffee is one of the richest sources of healthful antioxidants in the average person’s diet. Some of the newest research points to caffeine (also present in tea, cocoa, and other foods) as the source of powerful antioxidant effects that may help protect people from Alzheimer’s and other diseases“.

Barley bread – first try

straight-dough process made with

90 parts whole-grain stone-milled STREAKER hull-less barley flour;

10 parts dry wheat gluten;

100 parts water

1.5 parts instant yeast

2 parts salt

1.5 part malted barley flour

mix till elastic

1 hour bulk fermentation

divide 650 g & shape

1hour final proof

bake 200 deg C [400 deg F] 35 minutes

Physical and Sensory Properties of All-Barley and All-Oat Breads with Additional Hydroxypropyl Methylcellulose (HPMC) β-Glucan. Yookyung Kim, Wallace H Yokoyama. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry 2011 59 (2), 741-746

I don’t need ANY bad news about my espresso coffee!

From FECYT – Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, via “Eurekalert”

Here is their press release…

“Coffee in capsules contains more furan than the rest”

Coffee in capsules contains more furan than the rest, although the levels are still within safe health limits.

“Preparing a coffee in a drip coffee maker is not the same as making one in an espresso machine or from capsules, because these give rise to differing levels of furan”, Javier Santos, a professor at the Department of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Barcelona and lead author of the study, tells SINC.  Concern has risen over recent years about the presence of this compound in foods, because of its toxic and carcinogenic effects in animals, as well as the fact that the International Agency for Research on Cancer has listed it as a possible carcinogen in humans.

“The results, published online in the Journal Food Chemistry, reveal that higher concentrations are found in espresso (43‐146 nanograms/mililitre) than in coffee made in drip coffee makers, both in the case of normal coffee (20‐78 ng/ml) and decaffeinated coffee (14‐65 ng/ml).  The levels of these toxic products were “slightly lower” (12‐35 ng/ml) in instant coffee, but a great deal higher in those made from the capsules of a well-known brand, which showed up higher levels (117‐244 ng/ml).”

“The reason for these higher levels is due to the fact that hermetically-sealed capsules prevent furan, which is highly volatile, from being released, while the coffee makers used to brew this coffee use hot water at higher pressures, which leads to the compound being extracted into the drink”, says Javier Santos. The longer that coffee is exposed to the air in cups or jugs, meanwhile, the more the furan evaporates. ”

“Different values, but not dangerous: The researcher stresses that, in all these cases, the levels of the substances found are within the limits considered to be “safe” to health. In fact, the team has estimated the amount of furan ingested as a result of coffee consumption in Barcelona, obtaining values of 0.03‐0.38 micrograms/kilogram of body weight, which is less than the maximum acceptable level (2 μg/Kg of body weight). In order for furan ingestion to exceed the maximum acceptable values, a person would have to drink at least 20 cups of capsule coffee or 30 espressos per day (for the brands with the highest furan content), or 200 instant coffees. These estimates were made on the basis of 40 ml cups and an average body weight for coffee drinkers of around 70 Kg.”

“The study also shows that furan concentrations are lower if coffee is roasted at low temperatures over a longer time (140ºC for 20 minutes) than in coffee roasted under usual conditions (200‐220ºC for 10-15 mins).”

Furan, like acrylamide, is one of a group of carcinogenic substances that can form when foods and drinks are subject to heat treatment. They are the result of a reaction, known as the Maillard reaction, between carbohydrates, unsaturated fatty acids and ascorbic acids or its derivatives.”

###

M.S. Altaki, F.J. Santos and M.T. Galceran. “Occurrence of furan in coffee from Spanish market: contribution of brewing and roasting”. Food Chemistry 126 (4) 1527, June 2011 (Available online December 2010). Doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2010.11.134.

One of the short chain fatty acids produced in lower bowel microbial fermentation. Butyric acid production in the human lower gut is promoted by the ingestion of resistant starch [RS]: that is, starch that is resistant to digestion in the preceding elements of the digestive tract via either acidic or enzymatic hydrolysis. There are different types of RS:

RS1 is starch physically occluded [hidden] by other plant anatomical structures, e.g. when consuming unmilled whole grains;

RS2 is raw granular starch of poor digestibility often with B-type amylopectin crystal structures [potato & banana starches], RS2 starch becomes digestible on cooking after gelatinization;

RS3 is most commonly based on normal, or preferably high-amylose, starch sources. The need for amylose in RS3 is the enhanced capability of amylose to quickly and strongly re-crystallize (retrograde) on cooling of a cooked starch matrix. The strong tendency of amylose to re-crystallize and the ability to grow and make the amylose crystallites more perfect during repeated heating and cooling cycles is exploited in the food industry in order to create sources of RS3 for addition to foods

Back to butyric: the higher levels of butyric acid that arise from the RS fermentation (compared to the higher amount of propionic acid fermented from non-starch fiber sources) are believed to be the genesis of the protective effects of RS against colo-rectal cancers. Butyric acid is believed to act as a cell growth regulator for the cells in the bowel epithelium, but also contributes to other more general factors that improve bowel function such as lowered fecal pH. RS appears to be fermented in the distal (descending) colon, as opposed to non-starch fibers that are fermented in the ascending and transverse colons, it extends these beneficial attributes further along the digestive tract.

I’ve been having a work “vacation” – working with Craig Ponsford at the “Ponsford’s Place”  Innovation Center [link] to fine-tune our barley bread formulations.

We uncovered some interesting processing challenges that point to the particle size of the barley flour as being a suspect.

We played with the water because barley has so much great soluble fiber as mixed linkage beta 1-3, 1-4 glucans that it soaks up water like a sponge. These breads had 50% by flour weight whole-milled barley flour and respectively left to right 90% or 100% [flour basis] water. 100% water on this basis is equal weights of flour and water, and still it made bread.

Oregon State University’s “Streaker” hull-less barley going into the mill.