Alternative baking technologies

Baking technology is continuously changing to increase energy efficiency and savings, and to improve product quality. Today’s ovens have advanced from earlier simple wood baking stoves to sophisticated microchip-controlled devices. Earlier baking ovens were natural convection ovens which were followed by forced convection and gas-fired ovens. Then, microwave ovens and jet impingement ovens were introduced. Microwave ovens and jet impingement ovens provide noticeable improvements in baking technology and have been studied by researchers as alternative baking technologies. These studies focus on the following: 1. Understanding the effect of using alternative technologies on the physicochemical changes occurring during baking, and the physical characteristic of the finished baked product 2. Improving product formulations and oven designs to overcome any problems associated with the use of alternative baking technologies 3. Defining optimum processing conditions to obtain products with high-quality parameters The first part of this book chapter covers these alternative baking technologies and their applications. The studies on baking show that any single mode of baking (microwave, natural convection, and impingement) has its limitations as well as its advantages. These limitations have been encouraging researchers to study combination baking. The combination of alternative baking technologies has the advantage of producing a high-quality product with shorter and more efficient processes. The last part of this chapter focuses on these combination oven technologies as microwave and impingement combination heating, and microwave and infrared combination heating.